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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. Niel also founded and presides over the South African Slingshot Federation, affiliated with the World Slingshot Association — the business sits inside a genuine effort to grow “kettie skiet” as a recognised sport.
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.
A dated design
The site failed to reflect the premium positioning of the brand, or to inspire the trust a specialist buyer needs before ordering.
Poor product presentation
The catalogue lacked the structure and visual quality that a technical, detail-driven audience expects.
Nothing being measured
No key events tracked at all, so there was no way to tell which pages earned anything and which were decoration.
Invisible in search
A specialist retailer in a niche category needs to be findable for very specific terms, and was not.
What did the numbers do?
across 12 months
in 3 months
Google Analytics. Note the timeframes: the “after” column covers three months, the “before” column covers twelve.
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.
A conversion-focused store
Rebuilt on WooCommerce to show a premium product range the way a specialist audience expects to see it.
Eight key events tracked
From zero. Without events there is no way to know which pages do the work, so nothing can be improved deliberately.
An SEO overhaul
96.7K search impressions across the tracking period, at an 8.9% click-through rate — roughly three times the e-commerce average.
Hosting and care
Kept quick and maintained, so the gains from the rebuild were not slowly given back.
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.
See it for yourself: gxslingshots.com. The other case studies are on the case studies page, and the full list of what we have built is on our work.
What would the “before” say about your site?
Send us your web address and we'll go through the site and the SEO underneath it, then send back a written audit within 48 hours — the same look we take before starting any project like this one.