Here is your NoSpin Debunker for October 6, 2003

A Live Website Case Study-What would you do?

You've wondered what move to make next with your website to turn it into a marketing vehicle with real value? Here's your chance to decide what another company should do with their current site. This is a real, live situation, and the company is still deciding what it will do. You are invited to participate.

April 2002

A NoSpin client (we'll call "Company A") spends over $25K on marketing strategy, marketing positioning, development of all new marketing content, marketing materials, and a completely new website--a high end "brochure" site intended to be its first, serious step marketing step, online.

Fast forward to October 2003

Company A is talking to NoSpin Marketing about what to do with its website and marketing again--but is not sure how to proceed. Company A has made no changes to its website for 18 months and has minimally changed some of its homemade print materials (which no longer match the site). The company has new services that are not included on its website, and others have changed in relative importance. Company A originally implemented a low level of initial Overture Pay-Per-Click (that still generates some traffic) but has made virtually no SEO adjustments over 18 months. For the past year and a half, Company A has not been interested in any ongoing help to keep its website (or marketing materials) fresh, monitor its website traffic and bids, or move it to an Information Commerce site.

Theirs is a website gone fallow: old content (including old data), old services, old customer list, old testimonials, old positioning, old bios, old "look," no coordination with a sister website, no way(s) to collect contact information, minimal active promotion by Sales. Objectively, the site is on the edge of being embarrassing because the information on it is so dated and/or inaccurate.

A Live Case Study for You to Participate In

Company A is having trouble deciding what to do next with their website, and no decisions have been made yet. Can you help them out?

More data points:

  • Company A sells services nationally and has an impressive client base
  • Company A's service revenues per client are minimally in the $10K and up range
  • Company A continues to grow and be profitable
  • Top management describe themselves as Sales, versus Marketing-oriented, and are not believers in "Marketing" although they do attend a couple trade shows, give away some pens to prospects, etc
  • Company A has no Marketing infrastructure now-and likely will have none in the future.
  • Company A has new services that are compelling and unique but virtually unknown in its market.
  • Company A doesn't have any current professional marketing materials that describe these services or changes in other services.
  • Company A makes plenty of profit to reasonably afford any of the choices below.
  • The current brochure site gets stills get around 30-40 unique visitors a day (on business days), mostly search engine generated; the company does not monitor its website traffic
  • The current site has generated at least one significant client that it knows about (but there has no real tracking of any prospect leads)

Here are the website options that I've outlined for Company A:

1) Do nothing with the current outdated brochure site.
2) Take down the current site and replace it with a single page that has basic contact information.
3) Take down the current site and switch to a self-serve template option and put up contact information and basic product/services information-themselves.
4) Keep their current site and update their marketing print content and basic "brochure content," only, so that it minimally reflects their new/revamped offerings.
5) Develop a completely new information commerce site that both shows and tells about new and revamped services, updates other critical content, proactively collects prospect names, is search engine optimized, has a completely new look -one that will updated on a regular basis.

The CFO-financial types are going to say that there is not enough information to make a decision since it hinges on the exact dollars needed per option. But let's assume that the dollars scale up from zero $ (Options #1 and 2) to very minimal <1000 $ for #3-to $5-10K for option #4 and $15K+ for option #5-- amounts that are NOT any type of stretch for this particular company. There's no magical, ROI "proof" on this decision, as there isn't for most business decisions.

You Make the Call

OK, here are the questions for you to answer:

1) What would you recommend that Company A do? And extra credit for "why?"

2) What do you predict Company actually will do?


And after you've emailed me, check out my NoSpin Marketing homepage for what I am currently recommending to Company A and cast your vote for "What will NoSpin Marketing's client do?". I often do not predict what clients decide-and my recommendation may surprise you. I'll report back when a decision is made and compare your answers (and mine) to what Company A actually decides (and why). We'll see next Debunker what can be learned from this "live" case study.

Have good week.