Bar’s Products: Restoring an American classic (in premium automotive chemicals)

Last month we launched the Bar’s Products redesign, check out our case study.

Before Michigan-based automotive chemical company, Bar’s Products came to Doejo in April 2011, the producer and distributor—under the Bar’s Leaks and Rislone names—was looking to expand their customer-base even further. And its outdated web presence was no longer parallel to Bar’s innovation-driven identity.

The historic company prides itself in its full line of American-made chemical tools—remedying everything from AC blowouts and oil leaks to blown head gaskets and faulty transmissions. The international supplier also has strong ties to the fast-paced motorsport community, sponsoring dragsters, motocross and monster truck drivers and shows.

The Bar’s Products team chose Doejo out of a pool of 24 possible web firms, they said, because they had a gut feeling about us. They liked our portfolio of work, willingness to challenge their views and personal touch. We delivered a reinvigorated site engaging a new generation of customers, while bolstering brand awareness and educating visitors on products.

Our user experience-honed team entrenched themselves in the company’s rich history, wide range of products and customer base. This helped us build a dynamic product selector, so users can describe their car’s symptoms to find solutions (like a automotive WebMD); a store locator, in conjunction with Bars Products retailers such as AutoZone, Pep Boys and O’Reilly’s in-store stock; and a custom-made CMS supporting the multiple languages and countries Bars Products can be found in.  

To help engage new users, we integrated Bars Products’ motor sport-centric blog into their marketing site, weaving in Facebook’s social plugin for product comments and helped call out the company’s ability to answer customers’ questions through its social networks.

In the month after the new Bars Products site launched, the pages per visit nearly doubled, the bounce rate dropped 20 percent and users were spending over a minute longer reading about product features and benefits.