Rent-a-Party had a brick and mortar store that provided party rental services that helped in organizing exclusive parties for customers. They were spending more than $10,000 every month on office rental, marketing, and other operational costs such as electricity and maintenance. Since the area of reach was limited to the businesses locality, it was tough to get more business from traditional methods of advertising like yellow pages, word of mouth or newspaper advertisements. In fact, with the competition increasing, profit margins were decreasing considerably.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The problem was the limited exposure of the business and overdependence on traditional forms of advertising. As the revenues became stagnant and competition increased, a need was felt to revamp the business model. The solution demanded cost effective measures that would not only increase the customer base and revenues, but also aid in better management of services and products offered. The physical constraints due to the limited space in the store meant that the business owner, Dan Berger (names have been changed to protect the identity of the business and its owner) was unable to display the entire inventory at one place, which was resulting in improper management and lesser efficiency.
SOLUTION
Wider reach and lower cost of operations were the answers to this problem. E-commerce was the solution. It was now time for this party rental service to be transitioned to the virtual world with an e-commerce website. The website needed was one that was:
- Search engine optimized to direct customers from diverse areas to the business
- A place where unlimited products could be displayed
- Dynamic and customizable
Instead of hiring marketing people to advertise his business, Dan now had the whole online world as his playground, with no costs of hiring resources or printing brochures. With the e-commerce solutions offered by The Party Studio, he could now receive targeted traffic for his business as well as maintain better customer relations using the CRM services offered. The CMS services enabled him to add and delete products, add new deals and special offers with utmost ease, without any technical proficiency.
RESULT
The benefits were immense and were visible within a few months. Not only did the ecommerce website save Dan $10,000 each month, which he could invest in his business operations, it also increased the revenues of his business by transferring it to one of the fastest growing platforms, the virtual world. With an estimated 75% of the total population expected to be online by 2012, he was looking at a exponential growth. The best part was that he now had the processes (CMS and CRM) in place to manage this growth potential via his own customizable online store.
The benefits gained by Rent-a-Party by moving the business online were as follows:
- Within a year, sales tripled and the cost of operations was reduced by as much as 50%.
- The store was visible among the top results of all the major search engines, increasing the customer reach drastically.
- Dan could now run his store better, with lesser resources, using our CRM and CMS features.
- No technical proficiency was required to manage the online store or add new products and deals at anytime, with the help of dynamic templates.
- Customer records and order information could be maintained for better analysis.
BENEFITS OF USING PARTY RENTAL STUDIO
Party Rental Studio provides dynamic e-commerce solutions, designed specifically for the party rental industry. We know what problems people face in this sphere and how to effectively tackle them via innovative solutions:
- Dynamic Templates
Most companies were offering Rent-a-Party static templates, where in they could not add or delete new products without doing changes in the code. The Party Studio, on the other hand, offered Dan Berger dynamic templates that could be customized according to his needs. Not only were our templates specific to the party rental industry, we also saved Dan the cost of hiring developers for his site’s implementation. While other companies used a generic template that was integrated to every possible type of business, resulting in a host of complex and confusing features, our company offered him customizable templates that specifically catered to the party rental industry. - Content Management System
Using static templates for your online store means that you are maintaining your store without a database and content management system (CMS). This in turn means increased effort, lesser productivity and inefficient management. Our content management system helped Rent-a-Party dynamically add unlimited products and offers with ease from the backend. Since our content management systems are designed to be user friendly, Dan could now manage the content of his entire website, track order history, and manage customers’ information and much more. - Customer Relationship Management
Our customer relationship management (CRM) solutions helped Dan manage his customer information and business information, which led to increased revenues for his business. Our CRM helped Rent-a-Party centralize customer information across marketing, sales and customer service, resulting in improved productivity. Some of the features offered in our CRM were tracking order history, customer history, lead generation by sending reminder mails to customers and event calendar to keep track of the various events. These CRM solutions not only imparted flexibility to Dan’s business but also translated to customer satisfaction for the online store.
If you want to replicate the same kind of results for your business, get in touch with us today. We will analyze your business needs and offer you cost effective yet efficient solutions for your business.