How Stamina Products Was Able to Click, Scroll, Profit

Biz 417: Why did you create a separate website for the Juvo Board?

Taylor Hutchens: At Stamina, we build rowers, exercise bikes and things people understand right away. With the Juvo Board, there’s a lot more to it, so it needs a little bit more education. We decided it needed its own website so an interested party could be taught everything it does.  
 

Biz: What are the crucial components of a successful website?

TH: People don’t want to wade through tons and tons of information. With the home page and the opening video, we wanted to have somebody understand the basics of what can happen on the product in one minute. We’re inundated with information, so if we can make it as clear as day in one minute, and if they understand exactly what it is, then we’ve been successful.

Biz: How did you determine the right amount of time and money to spend on this kind of project?

TH: We look at this as an initial investment. It’s just part of launching a product like this. You have manufacturing tooling, you have R&D, you have all the research that went into it before, and you have your website. We had an idea of the goal we needed to achieve, and we needed to see who could get us there. We definitely weren’t looking at who could do it the cheapest—because there are lots of ways to do that—but who could do it very effectively and give us a lot of value, and that’s why we picked Mostly Serious.

Biz: What advice do you have for someone launching their own website? 

TH: Include everyone in your company, or at least the key people involved—whether they’re in product design or engineering or sales—and make sure everybody has their input. Come up with clearly defined goals of what you want to accomplish with the website because the Internet’s a crowded place. If you’re just having a website to have a website, you’re going to get lost.
 

Biz: How do you draw customers to your website? 

TH: Stamina has been in business for almost 30 years, so it’s been a slow build of the brand. One hundred percent of our traffic is organic. People are out there looking for exercise equipment. They see us at the retailers, and then they come to check out our site. They come to learn a little more about the product, and then they generally go to a retailer and buy the product. 

Biz: If people are heading to retailers to purchase your products, how do you keep your website useful? 

TH: Less than 1 percent of our annual sales come from our website, so it’s a tiny fraction of the business we do. We just focus on having the right content there and helping someone be able to find whatever they need to find out about the product. That means making sure we have the description, the features, the right images and the video all available so the shopper can come to our website, look around, be educated and then either purchase from our website or go back out to a retailer and buy them. We also use our website as a tool to collect reviews. 

Biz: How do you measure the success of your site? 

TH: We don’t have inventory of the product yet. We’re still in the process of getting it out there and introducing it to people, but eventually the success of the product will be measured in sales.