Case STudy

W.D. Matthews Machinery

A full-service material handler and retailer of construction equipment in New England.

Originally started as a farm and woodworking machinery retailer, W.D. Matthews has been in operation since 1939. The company now serves the majority of New England from its three locations in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Today, W.D. Matthews is recognized as an industry leader for its material handling and construction equipment services.

Visit their website

W.D. Matthews Machinery homepage on laptop

Project Details

SERVICES USED

TECHNOLOGIES USED
- WordPress
- Gravity Forms Plugin
- WP Timeline Plugin
- Notification Bar Plugin
- Google Analytics

KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- Modernized design that showcases W.D. Matthews’ core offerings
- Timeline of the history of the company using the WP Timeline Plugin
- Large increases in sessions, users, and pages per session as a result of SEO and Google Ads management

W.D. Matthews Machinery website on iPad. iPad is being held by two hands.

Google Ads Management

A client of ours since 2015, W.D. Matthews first came to us in need of website hosting. After being a client of ours for almost two years, the team at W.D. Matthews decided to take the leap into the world of digital marketing. In the early fall of 2017, we started managing both search engine optimization (SEO) and Google Ads for W.D. Matthews. Prior to our management, W.D. Matthews had never run Google Ads campaigns, or tracked any kind of online goals before. As a result, our first step was to set up goal tracking for form submissions, phone calls, and other conversion events in order to measure performance for both Google Ads and SEO.

Despite being a retailer, W.D. Matthews does not directly participate in online sales, so our efforts were primarily focused on lead generation. We created multiple Google Search campaigns centered around W.D. Matthews’ core offerings, including campaigns for their new and used equipment as well as their rental services. To help capture warmer leads, we also set up a Google Display campaign with a retargeting audience. Since our initial campaign launch, we’ve seen consistent growth in website traffic, users, and goal completions over the years.

Google Ads Campaigns Account For

of Total Site Sessions

of Total Site Users

of Total New Site Users

of Total Goal
Completions

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

We’ve been working with W.D. Matthews to help improve their SEO since 2017, only pausing briefly in 2021 for a website redesign. From then on, we’ve worked to increase their organic traffic through keyword research, technical audits, and on-page optimizations. Since we set up goal tracking for W.D. Matthews at the start of this project, we’ve also now been able to easily track conversion events attributed to SEO over the years as well. Overall, compared to performance prior to our management, there have been drastic increases in organic site sessions and users, as well as strong growth in session duration and pages per session.

SEO & Organic Traffic Improvements

Increase in Site Sessions

Increase in Site Users

Increase in New Site Users

Increase in Session Duration

Increase in Pages Per Session

Website Design

The Challenge

Our team has actually completed two website redesigns for W.D. Matthews, the first of which took place in 2018, and the second one in 2021. For the latest website, the team at W.D. Matthews wanted a refreshed design that showcased their products in a simplified manner and helped to better illustrate their services and value add. Other desired features included a way to display the history of the company, as well as a way for customers to easily contact sales representatives. These users needed to walk away from the new website with a complete understanding of W.D. Matthews’ services, history, and how to get in touch about specific products.

Our Approach

To fulfill these needs, we built W.D. Matthews a WordPress website with a clean, modern design that caters to their customers across a variety of industries. To elevate their core offerings, we used a mega menu for their navigation so pages that had been getting buried before were more front and center and a user could easily see at a glance the range of products available to them. Calls to action and contact forms were more prominently featured and we crosslinked services with products so a user always had more to explore if needed. We were really happy with the refresh of the new site and believe that their users now will get a more holistic view of the company, the products and services they offer, and their value add.

Homepage Layout & Design

Gives users multiple ways to find a product or a service: browse by category, brand, service item, or promotion. The design of the page is sophisticated, professional, and clean.