About the Customer

Founded in 1906, the Kirchner Building Company has been supplying its customers with construction supplies and services for well over a century. Kirchner Building Company is headquartered in Marshall, Illinois, and run by Kurt Kirchner, the great-grandson of the company founder, Charles Kirchner.

From those early days under Charles’ stewardship, the company has grown to 13 locations in East Central Illinois, Southern Indiana, and Northern Kentucky.

Today Kirchner Building Centers offer their customers expertise in lumber, building materials, hardware, windows, and doors. They also provide specialized services such as key cutting, window/screen repair, professional advice, kitchen design, and layout, free estimates, and paint color-match computers in some locations.

Business Challenges

Kirchner Building Centers found themselves in a similar position to several other brick and mortar businesses these days. They constantly focus on serving their customers on location. The process of modernizing and upgrading their web presence always seemed to land on the back burner. The website was always there but didn’t receive the attention it needed to be a tool to effectively drives customers to the stores.

Kirchner’s web presence became a higher priority when Vice President, HR & Business Development, Logan Swalls, and Digital & Content Marketing Specialist, Jake Wilson, entered the picture. Both Swalls and Wilson had a clear vision for how an updated web presence could make a tangible difference to their business.

“To compete in today’s business landscape where more and more people do their initial browsing online, we knew having a stronger online presence,” Swalls said. “At the same time, we wanted the online experience to feel like a familiar place customers could go to that would replicate our store location shopping experience.”

Solution

To build this best-of-both-worlds web presence, Logan and Jake turned to New Media Retailer (NMR), who presented an online platform that offered the capability to revamp the website and roll out email marketing campaigns.

To deliver what Kirchner Building Centers needed, it required more than just a software or platform upgrade. The new web presence also had to feel like the customer is in a Kirchner location. The NMR team worked with Logan and Jake on the ideal solution – go to all the stores and take updated photos. Simple as it may sound, it turned out to have a significant impact.

“It is crazy what a new set of photos can do for a website,” Jake Wilson said. “It completely gave it a facelift and made it seem like it had a whole new modern touch.”

The NMR development team had the new look website up and running in just a few short weeks.

Outcome

It didn’t take long after the upgraded web presence went live before the management noticed the impact. Right away, the Kirchner team saw increased sales, more foot traffic, and a higher volume of calls to the store.

“After moving forward with the fresh new and modern feel, we noticed a jump in the overall store traffic,” Swalls said.

Other more tangible metrics showed how much the new website was helping. The old website had an online contact form, but rarely did anyone reach out to the business in this manner.

Since the new website has gone live, we’ve been getting about four to five contact forms a week, which is more than we had gotten before,” Wilson said. “This just proves that customers are heading over and exploring the site.”

Swalls noted that having NMR maintain the site is one of the most excellent benefits since the upgrade.

“Having my marketing specialist take care of the monthly tasks for the website is such a welcome relief,” he said. “Now I don’t have to worry about it and can breathe easy knowing this is looking great and is being taken care of.”

Jake Wilson recommends NMR to anyone looking to bolster their online presence. The Kirchner and NMR teams have an excellent working relationship with proven results.

“We put our trust in NMR to ensure the upgrade to our website would deliver results, and there’s no question it has tremendously,” he said.

Conclusion

Kirchner Building Centers is a family-run business providing lumber and construction supplies and services to Illinois and the surrounding area for more than a century.

For several years, the website was more of an afterthought and was not doing as much to drive in-store traffic and sales as it could be.

Then, the NMR team worked with Kirchner to revamp their online presence in a way that would feel authentic to their many loyal customers.

By launching a new website with new photos that replicated the feeling of being right there in the store, Kirchner Building Centers saw an almost immediate increase in sales, foot traffic, and calls to the store. Just as importantly, the increase in online contact form submissions underscores the increased customer engagement the new website has generated.