How and why a leading dry bulk shipping company got a new website

C Transport Maritime (CTM)

C Transport Maritime SAM is a leading dry bulk shipping management company. At the time of writing, they are managing over 90 dry bulk shipping vessels,in the Handymax up to Capesize segments, with their managed fleet growing every month. Established in Monaco in 2004, the company has strong Greek and Italian shipping roots that reach back over a century.

Introduction & Thanks

Before we start, first I would like to thank Adrian and the team at Webtemple for inviting me to write this guest blog, and my colleagues at C Transport Maritime S.A.M. (CTM) for giving me approval to write it and to share this story. I would also like to publicly thank our C.E.O. Mr John Michael Radziwill & Mr. Carlos Pena for their belief in me and my ideas without their approval and guidance this process never would have begun in the first place.

Now do where do we begin this story of how my employer and I started to work with Adrian and his company, well why don’t we start with some basics. This blog is on How C Transport Maritime began to maximize our Digital Footprint, but before we get into that its important to tell you a bit of a story and to give you some insight into me, so lets begin. 

Each New Project Starts with one Person and an Idea

This partnership came about by chance as it was about a year or more into my employment with with C Transport Maritime (CTM). Having recently joined CTM after having graduated from the Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS) but for more on that story please click here to find my Alumni interview with SHMS.

Whenever joining a new company, you never know how long you will remain there after all the future is fickle thing so its important to search as to how one can make a lasting impression. This is precisely what I started to look for about a year or more into my employment. How I could make a difference and leave a lasting impression at CTM?

It was then one day I was looking at the company’s webpage for the first time from an analytical and marketing perspective, looking at every page, category, the wording etc. Then I conducted a thorough search on three of the main search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo), for CTM using most of the major keywords I could think of, and trust me when you have to search though all those pages sometimes until the twentieth page of search results before you decide to give up….and I thought studying for an Accounting exam was boring and dry. Basically you get the idea….it was a long and arduous process but eventually I came to the end of this part of my research and approached Mr. Carlos Pena with my findings. He then instructed me to come up with a presentation to be presented to all the managers within the company. To find out more about the management team at CTM who they are and what they do please click here.

This was the first time I had done this sort of thing…well ever as at SHMS I had always done it as part of a team, so I was used to having a team to bounce ideas off of. This time I had to produce an entire presentation on my own. This was an entirely new challenge for me, but I had gone to the effort of coming up with the idea and making it known. So there was no way to back out now, I had risen my head above the trenches and now was time to run, or fall head first into something horrible.

Still keep in mind that my knowledge of the world of commercial shipping was limited to the time I had been with CTM and my two internships with Chandris Hellas on two of their vessels covering a period of five months in total during my internships with them. However this in hindsight likely benefited me as I could approach this task with a different perspective.

I produced a handout of two-thousand five hundred words and a presentation with fifty or so slides, during which I pin pointed all the current faults with CTM’s website and what I would do to improve upon on them and what image I thought the company should be displaying. This was all based on my views and recommendations, which were unbiased and not influenced by anyone from the company. These were just based upon my views and thoughts so of course I threw in everything that I could think of, you name it including such things as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), Social Media, a blog, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) etc. I had to provide as many options as possible for this proposal. Without asking the departments what they would want, so I took the approach of Henry Ford and I quote:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a quicker horse”

This is the attitude that I took when approaching this proposal, but bear in mind also that I had spent the past year rotating around most of the departments in the company, so I had a fair idea of what each area needed and how they should be presented, whilst at the same time throwing my own original ideas into the mix.

Why we needed a new website designed (ZMOT)

Of course this wasn’t done solely on my own opinions, this was also based around my prior studies and experiences. The theoretical approach that I chose to take for this proposal, which the whole idea was based around was the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) developed by Goolge’s VP of Customer Solutions, Jim Lecinski in 2012.

The Zero Moment Of Truth according to Jim Lecinski, 2012 is and I quote:

“is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired or wireless device and start learning about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re thinking of trying or buying”

Before you start asking if that is an exact word-for-word quote….yes it is, this not just me being funny. Now we are not here to debate Mr Lecinski’s bit about potential boyfriend or girlfriend….when it relates to the ZMOT for that, you have many applications available none of which the author will be referencing. But I will say each to their own, but still it’s true for those reasons as well and it’s become big business. In fact one could easily argue that whether you’re a Tinder or Grinder person that the ZMOT has become a large part of today’s culture likely with out any of you ever realising it. Okay, so I lied and did end up referencing the major applications but what I can I say, it kind of had to be done.

I took the ZMOT theory into account and looked at how CTM’s current and prospective partners and clients would look CTM. Based solely on the website and our online activity, how the company came across and the ease of use that we could offer to them. This is due to the authors own opinion that a website these days is likely the way people will find a company or service such as CTM. This opinion was formed based on my prior studies and having read such books such as “Marketing Genius” by Peter Fisk and “What’s The Future of Business?” by Brian Solis two books, which I can highly recommend reading. Both these books hammer home the point that the world is getting far more competitive than ever before. Brian Solis in particular focuses on the importance of having a strong online profile, both for a business and for an individual. All this research and thoughts were placed in to the aforementioned presentation and handout.

So moving on and to not bore you any further on how this author came about with the idea of the new website. Nor much more of the process of doing it as that could be an entire book and not just the 2,500 words I produced in the presentation hand out.

Moving on to how C Transport Maritime and Webtemple began working together, and produced a great new website.

Putting things in Motion

The day before my big presentation, I got back in to the old University practice of preparing for it, doing practise runs, timing my self etc all the stuff that I needed to do. This was the first time I had done a presentation solo as normally I had done with with team of classmates / colleagues. Ensuring the presentation didn’t go on any longer than 10-15 minutes all that stuff doing practise runs till I had it down to around 10 minutes or so.

To my surprise my presentation was met with a terrific reception and approval across the board, from all the top managers in attendance along with my fellow colleagues. The decision was made then and there to proceed with most of my ideas. I was informed that I would be placed into a team with two of my fellow colleagues. This team consisted of Lora Iakovidi our Senior Analyst and Jessica Testa our Analyst both whom work in our Commercial department.

The process of finding a designer

This is when I begun researching website designers for our purposes, so I headed over to AWWARDS.com a site that is like TripAdvisor for website designers. It made searching for best possible companies easy and simple allowing to view quite a few metrics. Giving scores for such areas as: Design, Usability, Creativity & Content. In short it’s a great tool to use making it very clear to find what you’re looking for and one I can highly recommend.

This is how I found Webtemple, along with a few other companies but after looking at all the quotes we had received it came down to two designers. Webtemple and another company, in the end we chose to go with Webtemple. The deciding factors in that choice were that we felt that Adrian and his team at Webtemple offered a more complete package. The second factor was that their own website was far superior from a marketing standpoint, after all a website is predominantly a marketing tool. I felt that they offered the best offer and would deliver something that would fit our needs in the short and long term, and financially we got the best value from going with Webtemple.

So the decision was made and Jessica and I had the first Skype conversation with Adrian as Lora was unavailable at the time. Adrian made us feel comfortable with our decision to use his company after our initial conversation and the ones that followed, only furthered that belief.

A website is not just an asset, it’s the opportunity of a first impression

It was during this first meeting that Adrian recommended producing a tagline for the company, this had come up in prior conversations with the team. But as it would have involved modifying the logo, this conversation went up to Carlos Pena who after a brief conversation with our CEO. We got the green light, so I began to work on it and after three days of literally banging my head against my desk I approached Carlos with a few choices. The one we ended up choosing is the tagline you can now see on the website under the logo “Going Forward Together”. This after all we felt perfectly matched the ethos of the company, being a ship management company. CTM doesn’t own any of our own vessels and so we work closely with our partners & clients every day to achieve the best results. It’s also something I am rather proud of being the first tagline I have produced for a major company.

The Website Design Process

Adrian and his team started to produce a basic frame work of how the website should look. Once he delivered that it allowed Lora, Jessica and myself to start producing the content for the site. I came up with the idea to differentiate CTM by being more creative. This why you can see quotes on these pages: Home, the CTM Difference, Our Services, Commercial, Operations, Technical & Logistics pages.

Coming up with a Mission Statement

Luckily when it came to producing the written content for the website we had plenty of brochures and content from the current website, so we weren’t starting from a blank slate for much of it. This allowed me to see where we could just copy paste and what needed to be modified or completely rewritten. There was plenty of new content that needed to be produced as well one page where I had to produce something brand new was the Corporate Mission Statement. This Adrian recommended we call “The CTM Difference”, which worked as it is a fun title and inspired my vision for what to produce for the company’s first mission statement.

This mission statement was centred on the company’s new tagline. It was inspired by my experience working for the Four Seasons Hotel Company, at their Four Seasons Los Angles at Beverly Hills property. Where I worked in their Human Resources department under their now Director of Human Resources Mrs. Linda Stigter, someone who greatly inspired me and was a pleasure to get to know during my six months under her guidance. So I took their format and adapted it to fit with CTM’s philosophy and ethics. What I produced, I am not going to lie…am some what proud of, and feel that it hits all the right notes so to speak. To find our Corporate Mission Statement please click here to check it our for yourself.

Getting the Stakeholders Involved in Content Creation

The same is true for the other pages as well, but for those, I had that aforementioned content to base it off of. That and we spent time with all of the heads of the departments, asking for their opinions on how their departments were to be portrayed.

Our focus was on producing quality content that was relevant, which not only got across the information that was required but also that it had to have a good flow to it. My personal belief is that you can produce good content, but if reading it is the figurative equivalent of rubbing dry sand into your eyes no-one is going to want to read it. This comes from having read textbooks, which were so dry one would look at them and think “DEAR GOD KILL ME NOW!!!!”.

One page which was a priority of mine where we had a focus on was on the Commercial department. This where I took the approach that we had to put names to faces, which its the only department to have the names, titles and photographs of all the members of the Commercial team. Along with their direct lines, making communication that much easier and giving the company an open image. This is also why it is given the top position above the other departments and has as subdivisions our main products like the Supramax Revenue Sharing Agreement (RSA), Panamax RSA and the Capesize Chartering Ltd (CCL) pages. All of which were kept fairly simplistic but needed to have additional graphics and other features added to them. These are the companies main products after all and needed to be highlighted as such. Just to fully show our offerings and what prospective clients and partners will be buying into. This is where Adrian and his team really surprised us, not just did he produce the graphics but they were animated and fully interactive. This was a nice touch and things are easily edited from our side. Throwing in the individual fleet lists for the Supramax and Panamax RSA fleets, was something that we didn’t know was possible but the team at Webtemple made it possible.

Not to take away from the other departments all of which play vital roles within the company. Having worked with most of them and who makes the company the well-oiled machine that it is. As already mentioned we paid special attention to ensure that we produced for every department. A page that promoted their services and products in the best possible fashion. It’s very safe to say that no effort was spared in the creation of all these pages, some, of course, took more effort than others.

On the home page, you will no doubt notice that we have team photographs that are to the most part complete. To get our entire company to leave their desks to stand outside in the Monaco sunshine was a harder task then I at first thought it would be. No, we didn’t hire a photographer for this…again it was down to me, having experience as a photographer and I had my DSLR camera with me. It was something that we just about made work, luckily Jessica happened to own a very good tripod which we used. I have to say now I know how every single school photographer must feel, taking pictures of large groups of people is no easy task.   

There was one page that went through several renditions and changes, that was the “History” page. As the company didn’t have anything like this prior this required Jessica, Lora and my self to do some digging into the company’s thirteen-year history and to produce small entries based on every major event. How to best display it was something that went through several versions, where it was a slide show of all the events and two or three others. What we ended on how it looks today something that we are very happy with. Again we would like to thank Adrian for his patience and how he achieved our vision.

How the new website impacted our bottom line

With regards to the website there is much more I could talk about as this was a process that lasted for a few months. I am happy to report that the website has proven to be a success as of writing this the website has a bounce rate of close to 35% since we went online. Has accumulated more than 38,800 page views, from just 8,000 users who have accumulated close to 11,300 sessions on the site. With a returning user percentage of 71.6%, which shows that our users are enjoying the current and the new content that we are producing in our press releases etc.

To many industries these numbers might not seem that big, but shipping is an industry where according to a survey taken by Adam Baylor and Maren Engh of 100 shipping companies in 2012. This study found that 86% of shipping companies were not on Facebook, 92% were not on Twitter and 46% were not on LinkedIn. This is an industry that is renowned for being slow to adapt to the latest disruptive technologies. I am sure many shippers can tell you how most are still using Paper Bills of Lading when Electronic Bills of Lading have been approved by all the P&I clubs since 2010. But don’t take my word for it here is a quote from KNect365 Maritime’s article titled “6 Maritime Startups That Are Changing the Game”:

“The maritime industry is well known for being “traditional” and slow to change”

This is an article that I highly recommend reading, as it high lights some of the key issues that new technologies run into when trying to be implemented into the commercial shipping industry.

Now I will be the first to admit what I originally intended to be close to 1,000 words is now more that treble that…so I would like to thank you for sticking with it for those of you that have made it this far. Great news you have just about made it to the end of my ramblings about this story of mine. I am not sure what Adrian expected when he asked me to write this, then again I had no idea what I was going to write to be entirely honest, I just made it up as I went along….not the story just the format and the content.

But back to business…CTM is now on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Plus and Twitter all at my insistence. Due to my continued research showing that social media if handled correctly can be a company’s best friend or worst nightmare. The strategy I have so far employed on social media is to post and to repost content that is of interest to not just those interested in shipping but to connect shipping with the larger world. Also to show a different side to CTM; all of the quotes of the week that I have created & published in some way reflect our attitude to what we do, and how we go about our work every day. Reflecting the message that is found through out the wording of the website and mission statement. In some way that is of course, this has been my focus not just sharing our press releases and other company news. We have stayed away from “reactionary” posts on what is happening in the news and media in general. Simply as that sort of posting can get you in to a lot of trouble, so staying away from reacting to the world of politics (2016, wasn’t an easy year to ignore, but we managed it). We just focus on our business and what we can influence, we stay away from that which can only cause trouble. We have yet to invest in any form of paid promotion, such as Google Adwords or any of the equivalents on our other social media platforms, so all of our followers on all the platforms were gained organically.

Finally the end

So we have made it I have finally come to the end of this guest blog this story of mine, if you have made it this far please congratulate your self. Go and open up the beverage of your choice and enjoy it….in fact have one for me too.

I have enjoyed writing this and I can’t thank Adrian enough for his kind invitation to write it, its been great to tell this story and I have tried to keep it as light-hearted and informative as possible. Its been an interesting year teaching my self all about things such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and all the ins and outs of online marketing. Adrian has been highly informative giving me instruction when I needed it, always being ready to be on hand and available for us.

I do hope that I have not bored you too much of course… and on that note thank you for the reader for taking the time to read this and I hope you have enjoyed this guest blog of mine.