Complete redesign of the leading guitar brand’s website promises to provide dealers with a powerful, new in-store merchandising tool
Washburn, the world’s second oldest guitar manufacturer that has been delighting players since 1883, today unveiled an entirely new website that’s designed and built to provide dealers with a comprehensive in-store merchandising resource that’s equally compelling and informative for consumers doing their pre-purchase product information research.
According to Washburn Vice President & General Manager Gil Soucy, “Dealers need a totally modern Washburn website that is optimized for today’s consumer and filled with compelling information, photography, and videos that tell the Washburn story in a totally 21st Century way. This new website does all of this and we believe the site can and will be used by dealers in their in-store presentations and demonstrations to their customers. “The launch of this terrific new site is going to play a big role in providing our dealers with the content they need to help accelerate their Washburn sales for the upcoming holiday sales season as well as all throughout the year.”
Indeed, the new Washburn site features an entirely new architecture, platform, and design that is optimized for mobile consumers, which now make up nearly 50% of the Washburn site visitors. “The entire site was designed from a mobile-centric perspective,” Soucy emphasized. All of the pages are built using responsive design and technology that automatically conforms to the screen size of each user and delivers our design in a way that is specific to their screens.”
Mobile friendliness is just the start of the story behind the new website, however. The new site features a number of visual enhancements, including compelling consumer-focused photography that really showcases the look and feel of each guitar, and videos that feature contemporary players talking about what they like about individual Washburn models.
Product information is presented in more depth through the use of new elements that speak to what makes each guitar distinctly unique. Individual product features and their benefits are called out with links to compelling user videos that bring each product to life. Products are also grouped in new ways that make navigation of the site much easier, intuitive and, thus, time efficient for visitors who want to be able to get the information they want when they want it most — while not having to do time consuming site searches.
Behind the scenes of the new site, dozens of code changes have been made to make the new site much more search engine-friendly for consumers doing online searches for new guitars. The new site also features location detection technology that enables the site to provide visitors with suggestions that are appropriate for the country they are visiting from.
“Finally, Washburn has a website that is as compelling and rewarding as the guitars that are showcased there,” Soucy emphasized. “We will be making additional changes to the site over the next several months, but the essence of the new site is now ready to help dealers present and demonstrate the Washburn value proposition to a whole new generation of players.”