More visitors in one quarter than the whole year before.
GX Slingshots is South Africa’s leading specialist slingshot retailer, with a strong brand and a website that was not carrying it. The rebuild changed the traffic, but the more useful change was that anything was being measured at all.
Who is GX Slingshots?
The country’s leading specialist retailer of premium slingshot frames, bands, accessories and targets, founded by Niel Pretorius in Bloemfontein. It is South Africa’s primary stockist for international brands including SimpleShot and Pocket Shot, while championing local craftsmanship through South African-made products.
What was the problem?
A strong brand held back by a weak website. A niche audience is unforgiving: enthusiasts know the products better than most retailers do, and a site that looks careless reads as a shop that is careless with its stock.
The story, in plain words.
Niel Pretorius started GX Slingshots in Bloemfontein and turned it into the country’s specialist for premium slingshots, bands and accessories. It is the main South African stockist for brands such as SimpleShot and Pocket Shot, and it backs local makers as well. People who buy from a shop like this know the products very well, and they notice when a website does not.
That was the gap. The brand was strong and the website was not carrying it: the design looked dated, the products were not presented the way a technical buyer expects, and it was hard to find for the specific things enthusiasts search for. Worse, nothing was being measured. Not one key event was tracked, so nobody could say which pages earned their place and which were just decoration.
We rebuilt the store on WooCommerce over two months, with the range laid out for a specialist audience, an SEO overhaul behind it, hosting and care to keep it quick, and eight key events tracked from the first day.
The first quarter after launch brought 9.1K active users, more than the 8.4K the site had over the whole of the previous year. Peak daily traffic went from roughly 500 to around 2 000, and Google showed the store 96.7K times at a click-through rate of 8.9%. A fair note on the comparison: the “after” is three months and the “before” is twelve, which only makes the quarter look better. The change we would point to first is the quietest one. The shop now records what its visitors do, so every next decision can rest on something real.
What did we do?
A full e-commerce rebuild rather than a cosmetic refresh, and, the part that mattered most, measurement, so the next decision could be based on something.
The store as it runs today: the range presented the way a specialist buyer expects to see it, with the measurement in place behind it.
What changed?
9.1K active users in a single quarter, against 8.4K across the entire previous year, with peak daily traffic up from roughly 500 to around 2 000. But the row worth reading twice is the last one: key events went from zero to eight. You cannot improve what you are not recording, and before this there was nothing to look at.