May 2012 – laddergolf.com

[AnonymousParticipant]

Website: http://www.laddergolf.com/

Description: LadderGolf.com has been manufacturing and selling top quality outdoor games since 2003. Ladder Golf is a simple and challenging game that people of all ages can enjoy. To play, just toss the bolas and try to get them to hang on the rungs of the game ladder. You get 3 points for the top, 2 for the middle, and 1 for the lower rung. You play to exactly 21.

Brent from Ladder Golf states, “When we started the company in 2003, we hand made each set in our garages. Soon, demand for our Ladder Golf brand games skyrocketed and we had to find a manufacturer that could grow with us. We still only use the finest materials to manufacture our Ladder Golf brand games and never cut corners on quality.

Fast forward nine years from when we started and you will find many cheap plastic ladder ball games on the market, but we still only produce the highest quality games that we possibly can. We made a decision early in the company’s history that we would rather produce less of a truly top quality game, than compromise quality to meet a price point for retail stores. This is why you will only find the Ladder Golf brand games online at http://www.laddergolf.com and in a few exclusive retailers around the country that seek out quality products like ours.”

Technologies Used: Brent continued, “We use ShopSite Pro to power our ecommerce website and we also use things like WordPress, BlueHornet, Google Analytics, and Product Reviews on the site. Most people are familiar with the blog software, email marketing software, product reviews and website analytics, so I will skip over those technologies. They are all equally important to a business, but I want to focus on a couple things that we did recently that really made a difference in our sales and our customer service.

The first thing is that we moved from managing our own warehouse to an outsourced fulfillment center (Wegistix Fulfillment) a few years ago and it was one of the best decisions for the business. This shifted us from fixed warehousing costs to a more dynamic cost structure based on our shipping volume and the actual storage space. Instead of paying for and managing a warehouse, we can now focus on selling our products and keeping our customers happy.

Here is a brief overview of how it works. An order is placed on our website and the credit card is charged in real-time. That order is automatically routed via an API to Webgistix, where a Ladder Golf branded packing slip prints out. A worker then picks the items from the warehouse and packages the entire order for shipment. Next, the shipping label is put on the package and the items are double checked by a different worker for accuracy. Then the box is sealed and ready to be shipped. Typically, orders placed before 2:00 PM are shipped out that same day, Monday – Friday.

Recently we took this one step further and added our products to a second Webgistix warehouse on the East Coast. Surprisingly this service doesn’t cost extra, but the benefits we have seen are huge. Multiple warehouses located on both coasts allow us to save even more money in shipping costs and provide faster Ground shipping to our customers. It makes perfect sense…if our products are closer to the customers, then they will get them faster and we will save money on shipping. We are able to ship packages to a large portion of the country in two days with Ground shipping rates. We can have our Ladder Golf games delivered to our customers before some companies can even process the order and get it packed and ready to ship.

The second item I wanted to focus on is that we recently added a few product videos to our website and have since seen a substantial increase in conversion rates. The videos are simply product demonstrations that are loaded onto YouTube and then embedded onto our product detail page. Video is something that I have wanted to add to my site for years, but just never took the time to create. I highly recommend some sort of video on your website.”

Advice / Tips: Brent continued, “Advice or tips that I would provide to other online merchants would be:

* Provide more information on your products, add more photos, more details, and even video.
* Track conversion rates so you know what works and what doesn’t work.
* Provide an easy and fast method of checkout.
* Ship the orders to your customer as fast as humanly possible.
* Say thank you often to the people who buy your products.”

[Author]

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