Homestyle Rent To Own: Website, Social Media and Email
Homestyle Rent To Own is a, non franchise, rent to own furniture and appliance store located in Elgin, IL. They offer quality name brands that you know, such as Ashley, Whirlpool, Maytag and others that offer their line of home furnishings in a rent to own model. Homestyle also offers computers, electronics and gaming systems.
Homestyle reached out to Severity Design when they had lost their current web designer to a buy out. The previous website they had was not mobile friendly and had actually been taken down by the previous hosting company. They wanted a mobile friendly design, fresh look and some enhanced features so their prospective customers can find them on the web. Severity Design consulted with the owner of Homestyle to find out exactly what their needs are and what could be done within an affordable budget. As a self-owned business, Homestyle also needed additional help with their Facebook page and running email campaigns to their current client base.
The new Homestyle website featured an attractive automated slider on the home page for seasonal promotions, as well as featuring new additions to their showroom. The website also needed some additional Spanish translation that would enable readability to their demographic and attract the right client base. The most important addition to the new website was the online application form. This application enabled customers to start the pre-approval process by filling out the application online and coming into the store to shop. This allowed the Homestyle staff to be prepared with the required information to approve financing for the customer and gained a commitment from the buyer to come into the store to do their shopping. A win for both Homestyle RTO and the customer!
The Uncommon Palate: Website Design and Social Media Marketing
The Uncommon Palate is a speciality foods store located in East Dundee, IL. The mission of The Uncommon Palate is to provide unique, specialty foods and beverages produced in small batches for freshness and flavor! They carry clean label items (15 familiar ingredients or less) from around the world and by local providers, as well as fresh brewed coffee and tea, wine and craft beer.
The owner reached out to Severity Design with a need for a classic, yet modern take on a website to create awareness in the community on what The Uncommon offered and grow their online presence. They already had the perfect logo design created by a family member, but had no clue where to start with a website. Severity Design held an initial consultation and suggested they would need some professional photography to showcase the awesome store front they worked hard to build out and feature some of the items on display at the store. In addition, The Uncommon, would be able to use the photography for other promotional items and use it on their website to make it stand out to website visitors.
The result was a stunning, 7 page website complete with a home page animated slider to feature the store hours, menu and seasonal promotions. The website also included a online ordering section that syncs with their Clover POS system, where customers can order a small selection of products right from the website. We also created a blog section for the website to feature clean label recipes that include items that could be found in their store. Severity Design built the website in a WordPress CMS that allowed the admin to easily update and make changes to the website.
In addition to our web design services, Severity Design also had the privilege of running a Facebook ad campaign for The Uncommon Palate during the holidays. We offered two promotions, a “buy one, get one free” offer and a “20% off” coupon. Over the course of 7 days both promotions reached 7,827 people, with 28 people downloading the coupon. All for only $60!
HospitaliTEA Shop: Social Media Marketing
HosptialiTea is a tea shop startup run by Kay Morissroe. Kay started her business as a Tealightful consultant, but has since launched out on her own to open up her own retail shop to sell a variety of loose leaf teas and tea accessories. HosptialiTea is located in a antique market shop, therefore they needed to harness the power of social media in order to attract business into the State Street Market where the business is located.
HosptialiTea was the winner of a Facebook page makover contest that Severity had offered through social media. At the time, HospitaliTea only had a few dozen people following them on Facebook and really didn’t have the knowledge or time to update it, nor know how to use it to best create awareness that they existed.
We took over for Kay and turned their Facebook page into a marketing machine for them. We updated their cover photo, appropriately filled out all the location settings in Facebook for them and also generated tea content for them 4 times per day for one week. The engagement and reach for HospitaliTea increased by 20% and their following jumped up from 60 people to 150 in 1 week! We also consulted Kay on how to broadcast Facebook live to showcase her events and get even more people in the door to experience her delicious and healthy tea selection. We also took updated photography of her items in store to feature her beautiful tea cups and pots for sale.
Many businesses like HospitaliTea have similar needs, but don’t have the time, knowledge or expertise to execute to gain exposure for their business. We offer our social media marketing services to address these needs for small businesses to help them create the awareness they need to let people know they exist.