Select Page

Medical Products Company Ups Sales and Growth Potential Through Online Growth

To Hack Sells, sales manager of the nearly 30-year-old Think Medical, Inc., the only thing that moves faster than the medical industry his business services is the speed at which his company’s website can become outdated. Maintaining a modern outlet where customers, both present and potential, can interact with
the business is crucial to Think Medical’s innovation, growth and survival.

The woman-owned company, a supplier of products to hospitals and nursing homes in the American Southeast, first established a web presence a decade ago. Eventually, the addition of new product lines, new customer markets, and the dating of content and design made what had once been an effective website nearly obsolete. This meant a decrease in Think Medical’s potential for web-based connections and sales, detracting from growth of his bottom line. Sells knew the time had come to update.

A small manufacturer, Think Medical does not maintain a full- or even part-time IT staff. Site maintenance is the sole responsibility of Sells and his wife, Joyce, the company president. Sells admits that both of them have a lot to learn about contemporary web technologies.

“I’m absolutely not a computer guy,” says Sells. “But we looked at a lot of national sites and found we didn’t want the type of website they had in many instances. Small businesses like ours need to be really easy to contact and have several points of opportunity the moment visitors open it. I wanted ours to be user friendly, easy to navigate and adjustable.”

Working With A Trusted Partner

To help meet the company’s needs, and after considering multiple options, Think Medical sought help from the NC State Industry Expansion Solutions (IES), the organization that had created the original Think Medical website.

“Sometimes you like to do business with people you’ve worked with in the past because you know what
you’re getting,” says Joyce. “That’s why we went with NC State.”

“Everything is a personal decision when you’re a small company,” adds Sells. “Trust and availability are always at the top of the list. We knew the quality at IES would be good, and I like professional people I can sit down with and hammer things out.”

Think Medical worked directly with IES in-house experts to not only redesign the look and basic
functionality of the website, but also to learn the ropes of ongoing website maintenance, the issue that led them to seek help in the first place.

“I like that I can now add new products, new verbiage, new pictures,” says Sells. “To me, that’s way cool.”

Staying Current

In the brief time the new website has been up and running, Think Medical has seen an uptick in
connections, receiving new requests for information on where to purchase their wares. The company also plans to use the updated functionality to add enhanced product descriptions and videos so they will remain a go-to source for those in need of specialized medical products.

The company is pleased with the results they have realized to date; they have witnessed firsthand that, to a small businesses, a great website can often mean the difference between getting business and losing it.

“You don’t want your website to be old and stale,” says Sells. “You need to stay current with your own business and with the customers you have. So you have to always ask, what is your audience going to want to look at?”

DOWNLOAD NOW » Click here to download a PDF of this Client Success Story.