How Praxis created one highly functional website from two dysfunctional ones.

APS Novastar is a global equipment manufacturer acquired in 2006 by a private equity interest from two brothers who had owned and operated the business for twenty years. Up until the acquisition, APS Novastar was operated as two separate business units, one named Automated Production Systems, Inc. (APS), manufacturing SMT and PCB assembly equipment, the other named Novastar Technologies, Inc., manufacturing reflow ovens, wave soldering and selective soldering equipment. Each business unit, run by one of the brothers, had its own name, its own accounting system, its own staff, and its own web site. The private equity interest immediately recognized the inefficiencies created by the redundancies present and set about integrating the two business units into a single, consolidated entity.

They also recognized that their current websites were, at best, confusing to prospects and visitors, and at worst, driving customers away. Many of the products, while hosted on separate domains, had links to complementary products on the other website. Site navigation was challenging, making a simple inquiry on a particular machine a real trial of patience. Praxis was asked to provide a recommendation for consolidating the two websites into a single site for all products in an easy-to-use format, which provided their visitors multiple ways to find and inquire about the products best suited to their needs.

While developing the site navigation and functional specification, Praxis also developed a new logo for the combined enterprise now known as APS Novastar. New site designs were created with the objectives of offering visitors multiple ways to ’Äúhelp themselves’Äù to information on products so they could prequalify their interests before submitting an inquiry. One of the most important features of the site design was to aggregate all the products in one simple to use, universal navigation strategy accessible on every page of the site. The site’Äôs self-serve utilities, including a Product Selection tool, a side-by-side comparison tool, and a Product Inquiry Cart, along with several other conversion opportunities, were conceived to allow users to easily find a product model to match their needs and forward an inquiry to the internal sales team at APS Novastar.

Along the way, we found that the most difficult challenge in building the product database, essential for all the tools on the site to work properly, was nailing down consistent product definitions and specifications. Because so many of the companies’Äô products were catalogued informally, building the database forced a much more uniform system for applying product description rules to present and future products.

The site was built in a custom content management system (CMS), giving the marketing team at APS Novastar complete control over the content of the site without requiring programming knowledge.

The biggest challenge, however, was maintaining ’Äì and eventually improving ’Äì the two sites’Äô keyword rankings in natural search. Both sites maintained high natural search rankings, particularly for their most important keywords; and had been optimized over the course of a number of years. Praxis’Äô Search Marketing director analyzed traffic and rankings for the two existing sites, and made significant contributions to new site navigation and functionality to aggregate keyword strength and thereby boost rankings after launch. A variety of other internet marketing techniques were incorporated, such as creating several types of conversions to capture visitor contact info and optimizing Google AdWords campaigns. After site launch, Praxis provided ongoing support both to help the client manage their CMS, but also to assist in learning how to take more control over their future search optimization efforts.

Ultimately, a satisfied client is why we do what we do. As their vice president of Marketing, Debra Sesholtz, put it:

’ÄúI want to thank you and your team for all the hard work on the web site. Since the launch, we have been receiving very positive feedback on the site. I sent out notification of the launch to all our reps and dealers and we have been receiving emails and phone calls all expressing positive feedback. I just wanted to express my thanks for a great job! Thank you from all of us at APS Novastar.’Äù