Announcing MEA's new, updated web site
Elk Grove Village, IL --- MEA has just completed the re-construction of http://www.meaincorporated.com . This project was initiated in June of 2008 by the President, Ted Lasiewicz and General Manager of MEA Inc Marge Dombrowski. They wanted to give MEA Incorporated's web site an updated look and, more importantly, functionality. M.E.A., Inc. is in the business of designing, building and installing valve actuators for the oil industry. MEA Inc also designs, builds and installs guide measurement and gauging system for the steel and aluminum industry. His first action was to hire a web site consultant, Henri M Vasquez, whose job is to oversee and manage the look, construction and optimization of the new site. Part of his job was to hire team that would build and optimize the site. MEA Incorporated hired SEO Brand Media to build and optimize the site.
The first step was requirements gathering. Mr. Lasiewicz and Ms. Dombrowski not only wanted a site that was visually appealing but served a purpose. They had two ideas in mind. One, provide the viewer in depth information about each and every one of their products. In addition, give the viewer some visual representations as well as basic internal workings of MEA products. Two, provide the viewer with an easy way to request more information or begin purchase of the needed item online. The new site gives the viewer a very simple navigation bar for both product search and information gathering.
Many of MEA Inc's customers are from all over the world. It was necessary to provide current customers a simple way to contact us especially in an emergency. We created a page specifically for customer emergencies. The page can be reached in two very easy ways. On the home page, there is a graphic triangle that says "In case of emergency" at the bottom of the page. If for some reason a customer doesn't see it, the "contact us" page has the same graphic towards the top of its page. As you view the MEA products, the individual product pages contain three (3) tabs - Description, Drawings / Photos and Typical Specifications. This design gives the viewer a complete and detailed look at the product they are considering.
The biggest challenge the team was presented with was increasing web site traffic. This was done by first building the web site that is search engine friendly. The traffic we want to generate is "organic". Web traffic which comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as "organic" traffic. This means that the position or ranking is given to the pages that show the most relevance to the keyword search requested. In other words, the higher the ranking in a keyword term search, the more qualified traffic to your web site. When we started in June 2008, M.E.A., Inc. only had three (3) keywords that pointed back to the http://www.meaincorporated.com web site. Now, it is over 100 different keywords or keyword combinations and counting. About 45% of the keywords searched are ranked in the first page or top 10 listings.
The web traffic is not only up but more qualified. The proof is found in what is called the "bounce rate" (the rate at which people exit a site on the first page they visit). At the start of the project it was 80% in June 2008. Today, we are under 50% which means we have improved qualified traffic and visitor visits by 38%. This means that many more visitors are staying to search the site because it is more relevant to them. The number and the quality of the inquiries have gone up significantly since we started because of the improvements.
One of the unintentional benefits was described by Mark Castellanos, Engineering Manager. "Since the web site launched, I've been on two (2) Field Service trips and on those trips I've been able to utilize the website effectively in order to obtain similar drawings and schematics necessary to troubleshoot and solve issues when no one was available (outside of regular business hours) at M.E.A." He goes on to say "Presently, by typing ‘actuator' in any search engine, our web site pops-up. This never occurred with the prior site." To summarize, the new MEA Inc web site has proved to be beneficial to customers as well as internal people.
Marge Dombrowski added "We are excited to have the new website. New and existing customers can easily find us on the web. We are looking forward to the increased business and challenges. And once again prove that MEA Inc is the best actuator company in the world."