Case Study

Jane Schaffer Enterprises

We helped turn Schaffer's personal project into a full-blown e-commerce business with employees, offices, and two separate divisions.

Jane Schaffer came to RosArt with a personal project, the seedling of a business in need of direction, a promotional strategy, and an online presence. We ultimately developed a system of Internet promotions, marketing materials, and database-integrated, optimized web sites to help turn Schaffer's project into a full-blown business with employees, offices, and two separate divisions.

Schaffer has been teaching high school English Literature and Composition for over thirty years. In order to help herself and others teach more effectively, she developed a series of teaching guides which she then began to sell out of her home.

Local interest and demand increased for Schaffer's teaching guides, and she knew she needed a sales and marketing strategy in her venture. RosArt worked with Schaffer over time to shift her focus from executing "basement assembly stapling sessions" to utilizing an efficient, e-commerce website to sell her products.

We incorporated Schaffer's "lamp of knowledge" logo (designed by a future RosArt employee) into her first site, www.curriculumguides.com. The site was built in order to increase sales and grow the Jane Schaffer method teaching community. The site includes an "About us" with Testimonials, a Contact form, a Newsletter sign up and archive, and a Send this Site to a Friend feature. Most importantly, we implemented a shopping cart feature to allow online purchases of her guides.

The style of the site reflects an educational theme. We created the tagline "We do our homework" and designed a "notepad & pencils" look for the sidebar navigation panel to generate the desired effect.

As Schaffer's reputation and community of customers grew, she went on to build and scribe a system known as The Jane Schaffer Writing Program. She began guest-teaching classroom demonstrations of the skills explained in her new workshops. It was clear to the RosArt team that with an appropriate expanded promotional strategy, Schaffer's business would reach the national level.

By creating advanced marketing materials, a direct mail campaign, and a second website, www.janeschaffer.com, to promote her workshops and methodology, Schaffer's vision steadily grew to become a reality. What was once a personal project was beginning to turn into an educational philosophy and practice known to English teachers throughout the nation.

The new web site, www.janeschaffer.com, (cross-linked to the original) includes an About Us page, Workshop Information, an automatic Newsletter Sign-up/Remove application, a User Forum, (including a discussion board and curriculum resources). It is a place for the Jane Schaffer community to gather, and a place where teachers can find out about and sign up for her workshops.

Schaffer's www.curriculumguides.com site averaged almost 20,000 sessions per month in 2002. Her new site, www.janeschaffer.com, has responded well to promotional efforts, drawing traffic from a network of teacher-specific web resources. The amount of visits multiplied six-fold during a three month period, in addition to the traffic from her original site.

Due to the rapid growth of her success, Schaffer has taken an early retirement from teaching. As her business expands, RosArt constantly develops new strategies to promote her services, products, and reputable educational methods.