Web site gives local business a good drenching

By Jim Obert

Business Today

Tri-State Swimming Pools of Cape Girardeau isn't drowning in too much business, but like a rising tide, business has increased since the company dove into its own Web site.

Jack Byrd, co-owner of the company that was founded in 1970, said Tri-State went online about one-and-a-half years ago. His business is a member of the National Swimming Pool Institute, which hired a Minnesota-based company to create Web sites for its members.

Until recently, Byrd had limited control over the contents of his site -- tristatepools.com. If he wanted information added to the site, he had to have the company in Minnesota, 50 Below, do the work.

But after a lot of "fumbling and cussing," Byrd taught himself how to develop and edit his site.

"Hardly a day goes by where I don't change something or add something or streamline something," said Byrd. "We have a digital camera that we use to take photos of our products and scan them into the site. Lately I've been adding a lot of photos and written information to the accessories page."

Byrd has many links on his site and has 30 to 40 more pages to add overall. The photo gallery link has 12 photos of indoor and outdoor pools. Brunswick pool tables are found at another link.

He said the business his site generates far exceeds what the Web site cost. Last year a couple in Chicago accessed his site. They told him they were moving to Jackson and wanted a swimming pool put in. They chose the swimming pool they wanted from photos Byrd had posted on his site.

Besides swimming pools, the business sells chemicals, decorative rocks, spas, Brunswick pool tables and pool cues. Also available are a wide variety of swimming pool-related accessories such as pumps, filters, heaters, pool paint, replacement motors and automatic pool cleaners.

Everything the business sells can be seen on Byrd's site.

"We're now putting in information about a new weather instrument we're selling," he said. "We're putting in the information and photos."

Byrd said he has always done newspaper, radio and television advertising. Now he's advertising on the Internet. Earlier this year he bought an ad that appears on the front page of the Southeast Missourian's Web site. Two other e-ads are on the inside pages of the daily editions. When people click on the ad -- a colorful graphic of a child jumping into a pool of water -- they are whisked to tristatepools.com

"We began advertising on the online editions of the newspaper in January," said Byrd, accessing semissourian.com to view the ad. "We've gotten about 200 hits so far. We're not getting thousands of hits a day, but you can't have as many hits as we've been getting without it having an effect somewhere down the road."