1) It Has More photos
If you receive our email newsletters I’m sure you’ve seen some sneak peek pictures of the bulls. Every year these prove to be the most popular emails we send. It’s also the number one suggestion we get with the catalogue each year. When we sell more bulls than anyone in Canada we try to avoid sending an encyclopedia sized catalogue in the mail every January for obvious reasons. The good news is this website makes it easier than ever to access sneak peek photos of this year’s bulls as well as hundreds of photos of bulls of years past as well as photos of our cows and calves out on green grass.
2) It Has Mac’s Marketplace
You’ll find our own and our customers’ replacement heifers available for private treaty sale. We hope to develop and expand on this and help our customers merchandise thousands of head of cattle. Your ranch to your new customer’s ranch. Private treaty selling. It just makes sense. In the past few years our website has merchandised hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of customers’ females and we are only getting started. Purchase our bulls and take advantage of this opportunity, free to our customers. Potential buyers refer to our site 12 months a year. Customers with listings report interest year round. Mac’s Marketplace isn’t just limited to replacement heifers, you might also find a job posting looking for seasonal work on our ranch or a customers’ ranch. It can help you market your hay or excess feed, or post an ad stating that you’re looking for some. It’s a service we offer to our bull customers, just let us know how you want to use it.
3) You Like Videos? We Like Videos
This new website is full of them. Looking back we first started putting our bulls on film in the early 90s and pioneered the 30 minute bull sale preview format. It was a simple concept, hook two VCR’s together, buy a blank VHS tape from Zellers, dub a copy, take the bulky video tape into the post office, pay the postman $8.00, and send it on its way to a prospective customer. Then when they finished watching we asked that they give it to their neighbor or dish out $8.00 and send it back to us. Fast forward a decade to a new millennium and Canadian households are purchasing their first DVD player and M.C. Quantock retires the fleet of VCRs and starts sending out disposable lightweight DVDs. Then in 2006 YouTube would change the way we view videos forever. Again we were first to market. In 2006 if you searched for Bulls on YouTube you would see a few clips of Michael Jordan and then MC Quantock Red Angus were next on the list. Now in 2014 those videos of our bulls on YouTube have been seen by over 110,000 people worldwide. So we have those great videos embedded throughout the new website. You’re welcome to pop some popcorn but we don’t need you to “be kind and rewind” like 20 years ago.
4) It Goes Way Back
We have a considerable amount of old content you can paw through if you wanted to take a walk down memory lane. Did you ever want to go back and look at photos of the bull you bought six years ago? You can go back in the catalogue achieves and find him. It also allows our customers to go back and look at our herd sires of yesteryear. It’s a nice walk through time going back and reading in the old catalogues about the optimism this industry had even throughout drought and border closures. Really makes you respect the great position this industry is in today.
5) It Looks Good On Cell Phones
This may seem like a small detail to some, but it’s really caught on over the years. There are all sorts of reports about how widely used cell phones are today. We’ve seen it too. Back in 2010 the last time we redesigned our website 0% of our website visitors came from cell phones. Over the past years we’ve seen that number sky rocket, when you add iPads into the equation over 1/3 of our website visitors are accessing it on their cell phone. In fact we get more visitors to our website to look at bulls today via cell phone than we did overall visitors compared to just 3 years ago. So if you are reading this on your computer right now, you can go grab the iPad and get a comfy spot on the couch. Or better yet pull up the website on your cell phone tomorrow while you wait in the truck, because who likes fixing fence in the rain anyways?
6) It Has More Content
It seems simple, but hasn’t always been so easy to do. We’ll be adding content on a more regular basis. We’ll have bull data and photos as they become available. As well as other seasonal updates. In the past our formula has been update the site once before the sale and once after the sale. Today people are online more than ever and we’ve got useful information year round to match. You’ll find unique stories we posted to Facebook, our insight on events facing the Canadian cattle industry, and probably a few new photos of life on the M.C Quantock Ranch from time to time.
7) It’s Just Prettier
Websites have come a long way. We expect them to be fast, and flow smoothly. It was time for an overhaul and we’re happy with the new look. It’s a consistent look that matches our ads you’ve seen in the publications throughout the years. The layout is designed with you in mind. Helping you get the info you want as quickly as possible.
If you think of more things you’d like to see on the site by all means leave a comment below or send us an email. – Lee Creech
