Container & Packaging Supply

How a regional container distribution company became competitive against national competition online.

Container & Packaging Supply (CPS) is a family-run distributor of containers of all types. While online sales helped expand their customer base well beyond their homebase of Boise, ID, it also gave their Director of Marketing, Keith McCauley, new things to worry about.

Keith realized that CPS was no longer simply competing with other regional businesses—they had to win customers nationally.

Keith needed to give his website visitors a reason to choose Container & Packaging Supply over big, national competition.

To compete nationally, you need trust.

To do that, Keith knew he needed his customers to trust CPS no matter where in the country they lived. He believed that reassuring customers that they were safe would help them choose CPS over the other guys. After trying out a few security seals, he eventually found the McAfee SECURE service.

In 2008, Keith tested the service by displaying the trustmark to 50% of containerandpackaging.com's visitors. The trustmark lets website visitors know that a site is tested and certified to be safe—exactly what Keith was after.

And when the results came in? It showed that displaying the trustmark increased sales by 8.3%. Needless to say, Keith was very satisfied.

"When everyone saw the A/B test results and calculated what the increase represents across an entire year...it's a no brainer. It is money well spent."

- Keith McCauley, Director of Marketing, Container & Packaging Supply

Brand matters.

Keith believes one of the reasons the McAfee SECURE service performed so well was because of strong brand recognition: "Visitors coming to our site have almost certainly seen the McAfee SECURE trustmark elsewhere. Having a recognized IT security brand like this on our site adds to the professionalism that our online marketing program is designed to create."