Case Study: Raw Dead Fish Restaurant Website
The Brief
Travis Whiteside had been Coeur d’Alene’s most popular sushi chef for over 20 years. He had recently embarked on a business venture creating amazing sushi out of his custom-built mobile kitchen (food truck).
Travis’s reception had been terrific. On Facebook, he had over 250 5 star reviews. It was obvious he was killing it. He wanted an online medium that he had 100% control over. One that he could use to market specific offerings he had like deliveries and catering.
Our Approach to Marketing
Having been a sushi chef for 5 years, this one hit close to home for me. I was an apprentice under Travis for years so I was eager to give back to the man who taught me so much.
I began the project by going to his location and snapping some pictures of his beautiful truck. A description just doesn’t do it justice…
Raw Dead Fish Sushi Truck located at 514 E. Best Ave. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83815
I grabbed a large nigiri assortment from Travis and went to the top of The Coeur d’Alene Resort and snapped this picture.
Large Nigiri Assortment with Lake Coeur d’Alene in the background.
With pictures in hand, I went to work building him a custom website that would showcase his offering and give customers an easy way to view his menu online.
We built this website with an infusion of on-page SEO best practices to make sure Travis showed up on top of the Google search results when people looked for “sushi in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho”.
The Results We Produced
Besides the flood of compliments Travis has received, his sales have increased 50% in the 4 months following the publishing of his website.
Updated 8 months later: Raw Dead Fish has continued to grow. As revenues increased over 100% since the launch of the website, Travis was able to hire a full staff and keep the restaurant open 7 days a week instead of 5. He now has his eyes on expanding and continuing to grow his businesses.
Travis has begun delivering sushi all over the Coeur d’Alene area and has used his website to make people aware of this fantastic offering.
Overall Travis has seen an incredible return on his original $1500 investment. He has laid down the infrastructure to expand his online marketing in the future.
What We Learned
We learned that a website is an important part of any business’s image. While mediums like Facebook and Yelp can and should be used, a website provides the foundation a business needs to take full advantage of their online presence.
A website also increases the legitimacy of a business. For a food truck, there is a challenge in the perception of consumers about the safety of eating food from a truck, especially raw food. A website is an invaluable tool for earning and keeping the trust of your customers.
We also learned that practicing proper SEO fundamentals of building a website is often enough to place it on the first page of Google results. This is because most web designers don’t understand SEO. We now believe that web design and SEO must go hand in hand in order to produce the best results.
