DP Seals provides custom rubber mouldings to applications as varied as Formula 1 racing cars and steam
cleaners, 800-seat passenger planes and ticket machines. In three decades, the company has grown from regional to global with a blue chip customer base.
In 2000, the company decided to make the website the focus of its communications strategy. At that time, its competitors’ websites contained little information of use to design or production engineers. DP Seals focused on its strengths - materials knowledge and tool design - in the website content. From the outset, the website allowed design engineers to upload engineering drawings straight to the company’s CAD/CAM network.
Rubber technologists typically provided performance data on the Internet, but it conveyed little information useful to design engineers. DP Seals’ material pages offered information an engineer could use immediately. Web statistics showed the site’s materials pages became very popular within a short timeframe.
Recently, DP Seals integrated one of the web’s most comprehensive compatibility checkers into the website. Users can compare the performance of over a dozen rubber polymers commonly used in seals and mouldings against some 1,650 chemicals - from 1,1,1 - Trichloroethane to Zirconium Nitrate.
Rubber technology does not stand still, and neither does DP Seals: the website documents the company’s
experiences with embryonic materials such as nanotechnology rubber and silicone fluoroelastomer.
DP Seals’ global market has grown steadily over time. The decision was taken to translate a snapshot of the website into Japanese; a step that immediately demonstrated increased interest. Whilst the Japanese site (jp.dpseals.com) is accessible from the main site, American-English pages are accessible only through pay-per-click advertising.
In summer 2007, an American consultancy surveyed 800 custom rubber moulding SMEs across the world
for a French multi-national, and placed DP Seals’ website in the top three on information content and accessibility.
Understandably, many engineers do not appreciate how rubber polymers can be blended and moulded to achieve a given objective. DP Seals’ website demystifies the technology by providing information of immediate use to design and production engineers.