Safety Glasses USA Case Study

"We knew right away we wanted to get away from the cookie-cutter e-commerce look. We wanted a professional looking design that was clean and easy to navigate. But we wanted something more. We wanted to partner with someone knowledgeable in e-commerce who could point us in the right direction. Solid Cactus had the design capacity and they had the practical experience running their sister store Theferretstore.com. We have a rapport with Solid Cactus which goes beyond our business relationship."
-Mike Eldridge, SafetyGlassesUSA.com

If it protects your eyes, SafetyGlassesUSA.com probably carries it. Military eye wear, industrial safety glasses, laser protection and related industrial safety products are all offerings of SafetyGlassesUSA.com. Founded in 2000, the company is the distributor for 28 different eyewear manufacturers representing upwards of 4,000 products. They now have a brick-and-mortar store which serves as a showroom for their product base. SafetyGlassesUSA.com knew within a few months that they needed their store to do more for their business. "We were getting a smidgen of success," says founder Mike Eldridge, "but it wasn’t enough. We saw the Solid Cactus portfolio and we knew they were much better. Solid Cactus had the look we wanted." SafetyGlassesUSA.com began its redesign with Solid Cactus in July of 2001. Among the front end changes were many customizations relating to their products. "Our industry requires different prices for consumer and commercial buyers," says Mike. "So we had to account for that in our set-up. Solid Cactus made it happen with Multiple Pricing." Solid Cactus also added navigational enhancements and improved their product layout like Custom Order Buttons, Custom Layouts for custom options or lens choices, Cascading Menus which are easier to follow and Rotating Specials on the home page to prominently display consumer favorites. "We’re like a tiny house that kept adding on until we became a mansion," says Mike. "As we progressed, we saw new options that we thought would help us and we incorporated them."

One important addition came in the form of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO made SafetyGlassesUSA.com easier to find by search engines. "Go to the major search engines and type in 'safety glasses' and you’ll find we’re #1 on Google and #2 on Yahoo!" says Mike. "And those are organic rankings without any pay-per-click advertising. When you’re on the first page of the search engines' rankings you’re going to get lots of business, and we have."

The results were immediate and they were dramatic. "The first month, with a limited product line we went from 65 orders a month to 400," says Mike. The business grew from a one-man band to 11 people including Mike's wife. They added a showroom, and are now moving into a 9,000 square foot facility nearly doubling the size of the original site.