I've been in the piano industry for five years and am just over a quarter century old. Some of you may or may not know that the piano industry is mostly very "veteran piano employees". Let's just say I am a VERY young representative in the retail piano business.  About 15 months ago I was trying to think of ways that I can make a big impact in the piano business.  When researching the websites of other piano companies, dealers, and piano communities a light went off in my head.  This is in this is how I make my impact in the industry. I realized how stale, similar and unentertaining these piano websites were. Soooo...

I looked at my company websites and decided - I am going to make this a website that consumers will enjoy but, most importantly the will want to visit our store and select a new piano.   I had no experience in webdesign, seo, link building and all the other never-ending factors that come along with building a website. The only thing I knew was Facebook and Myspace (Thank You College). So I started by researching, researching, joining SEOmoz, researching, and doing more research. Then I realized one brain can only take in so much research and the research is good but, it useless if you didn't have a site to experiment with.

Before we go further here's some background.... I am the VP of Sales & Marketing for Steinway Hall - Dallas/ Fort Worth/ Plano the exclusive Steinway & Sons piano dealer in North Texas.  Our site was static and every 6 months a new page might be added, no conversion forms, looked like just another website. Most unsatisfyingly we were no where to be found in the SERPs. We averaged about 10-20 visits a day.

So, I decided to put together a game plan and go get my feet wet. These are the 5 areas I thought I should target first (1 being the most important) - In parentheses is the result.

1. Design - (Steinway & Sons allowed me to be the "guinea pig" for their Beta Dealer Template"

2. Domain - (steinwaypianos.com.com)

3. Tools - (Joomla)

4. Pictures - (Used the same from old site)

5. Content -( Lets just say, oops - this in now #!)

Side Note: (no pun intended) I thought the way our site looked was the most important aspect possible.

After about three months we launched our new website to the world.  Was this pre-mature? Yes but, I don't regret it. Because it was from this point on I started learning more about creating a user friendly site. After the first three months we did see some improvement. We got a lot of compliments on the "design" of the site and a slight up-tick in daily traffic and started to show up in the first 5 pages in SERPs. That's it, nothing more. I thought what is going on the site looks great whats the problem? So it was back to the research... I thought. But then I realized, the site that we had just launched looked good to us but, we're not the users, or in the market to buy pianos.  So we took it to the streets, well not really to the streetsm we went to our past customer base.

Every time I had the opportunity to ask a customer who had just purchased a piano, used our piano services, was local pianist, piano teacher or piano enthusiast I would point blank ask them "What is most important to you when looking to buy a piano? Here are the most common answers I received with. (1 being the most common)

1. Product Information (What is the best piano for me?, NOT what is the best piano?)

2. Socialability (Who do collaborate with, what music organizations, teacher, students?)

3. Site Organization (Where is everything)

4. Customer Testimonials or Stories (How did others feel about their experience with you company?)

5. Company History (Why should I purchase a piano from your company? What's your story?)

After compiling this information I thought to myself: Well, I guess cool design and a lot of great pictures was only important to me. 

So what do I do? Hire an website company? No, no one knows my company and my products like I do. And I love challenges. What I decided to do next I think every new website owner should do: Meet the need of the users and over achieve at doing so. This is what I did and how I went about meeting the top five answers above.

1. Product Information - Detail the each product. By not just a picture but with content, history of the product, who usually purchases this piano, and videos.

2. Socialability - Communication at all avenues: Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Blog and anything that you can handle easily. I got overwhelmed by having to many social profiles for our business and wasn't able to dedicate the proper amount of time to each. Quality over Quantity.(Remember earlier I mentioned that the piano industry has a lot of "seasoned experience", you should have seen their face when I said Twitter & Blog.

3. Site organization: I re-catagorized the information so someone who has zero knowledge about the piano could find what they are looking for. Make it SIMPLE!!! (More on this below)

4. Customer Testimonials - I asked had each employee ask their clients for a testimonial.  This worked ok, but there is no enjoyment for the customer.  Therefore, I set up a section on our blog for customers to submit "Their Steinway Stories" This has just started but, we are planning a big marketing campaign on this. You never know, the author of the "most popular" story may we a trip to tour the Steinway & Sons factory in New York. Stay tuned...

5. Company History - I need to spend more time on this but, we do have a company page about who we are and what we do.  Ohh and yes, that is me on the home page, I am the one on the right. We are a family owned company.  I am amazed at how clients that see me in the store say "hey that's you on your website." Some people say putting your face on your business website is tacky but, I think there are many who believe that this shows you have nothing to hide and show a sense of pride.

Conclusion: Content is only king if it entertains and gives the user what they are looking for. By dedicating myself to the meet the need of the users our site ranks anywhere form 1-5 in the SERPs for keywords, Average 100-120 unique visits a day, and average 35-50 web inquiries a month = 2 to 4 piano sales a month were the first contact was via our website.

 Don't worry I'm almost done. But I want to share three most important things I've learned so far.

1. Think of the users on your website as guests. When you have a guest over to your house you want them to be comfortable. To insure they are comfortable you put everything they might need during their stay in the wide open so they don't get frusterated while SEARCHING for what they want. Could you imagine if every hotel put towels in a differnt place and you had to search for them. You would either leave (page exit) or never return. Organization = User Friendliness.

2. Make your site seem like the customer is already in the store.  I found great success by doing trying to accomplish this. When you go to our site, www.steinwaypianos.com, notice that the main categories are in order, from left to right, of the customer buying or shopping experience. In parentheses is a typical in-store retail sales process.

• About us - Who is this piano dealer who wants me to buy a piano from them (Greeting & Introduction)
• Instruments - About the pianos we represent (Presentation of products)
• Institutional Sales- Programs offered to schools, churches, and piano teachers. (Who is the piano for?)
• Advantages - Advantages we offer to help the customer make the right decision for their family. (Decision making tools)
• Service - Services & Maintenance guidelines we offer for their new piano (After-sales service)
• News & Events - Now that they own a piano what concerts, events, headlines is Steinway making (Continuing the relationship.)

3. Successful People Never Stop!!!!!

Thank you for allowing me to share my experience and any comments and/or suggestions you leave will be greatly valued.