Portland, OR, June 20, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —
With thirteen locations across British Columbia and an enormous amount of new and used heavy equipment machinery to sell, Rob Brown, the owner of Great West Equipment, doesn’t have a lot of extra time on his hands. When his previously manufacturer-sponsored website continued, year after year, to fail at bringing in any leads or resolve service-related issues, he threw in the towel.
“If something doesn’t work, what’s the point?” Brown says.
Unlike some in his industry, Brown realizes how crucial it is to have a powerful website for his heavy equipment dealership.
“A few years ago, business changed. When I started in this industry, everything was done with a handshake. A website was simply not required,” he says. “But now that generation is retiring and younger people are coming up. They’re going online to do comparative analysis against machines at other stores, and getting information from websites.”
Especially with the Canadian dollar down, Brown recognizes how much his new Dealer Spike Heavy Equipment website, launched in August 2015, is helping his business. “People below the border are fully aware of what’s going on. We have a lot of Americans looking for Canadian equipment online,” he says.
Before partnering with Dealer Spike, Great West Equipment’s website was not a source of revenue for the business.
“The manufacturer offered web services to us for free,” Brown says. “The site wasn’t too bad, basically it just looked the exact same as all the other dealers’ but branded with our dealership name.”
But that’s where Brown’s nice words about their old web provider ends.
“They were constantly going through web developers, and it was incredibly frustrating to get any changes made,” Brown says. The manufacturer only provided a choice between six templates, and Brown says it was problematic that they could only work within the confines of those limited options. He also points out the old website’s extremely slow load time as a major issue.
On top of those issues, Brown had no way of tracking leads on his old website. That is not the case with Dealer Spike Heavy Equipment – tracking and increasing online leads are the most important aspects of Great West Equipment’s new site.
“After twelve years with our previous provider, we never got one phone call with an inquiry related to something a customer had seen on our site,” Brown says. “Now we get phone calls all the time with people mentioning a unit on our website. I know that a ton of people are looking at it.”
Brown emphasizes how slow and inattentive his previous web provider was, and praises Dealer Spike for its support. He mentions a specific DNS project when he “needed some goofy things done in a panic.” Brown admits that he made an unreasonable request, but the support agent assigned to the project resolved it during his off-time on a Sunday morning before a family event.
“Customer service is why we are with Dealer Spike,” Brown says. “For us, pricing is not number one. The team at Dealer Spike does what they say they will, in the right timeframe, and they follow up. Great West Equipment and Dealer Spike have a partnership – we’re a team. I have no complaints whatsoever.”
Currently, Brown and his team are in the process of moving the Great West Equipment headquarters – based in Vernon, British Columbia – to a new building. “Once the move is done, we want to pursue our website and add-ons more aggressively,” Brown says. Digital marketing add-ons that Brown and his team, which includes a brand-new marketing manager that was recently hired, plan to implement include Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media/Email Marketing with Dealer Spike Heavy Equipment.
CONTACT: [email protected] www.DealerSpikeHeavyEquipment.com 800.288.5917