This is me! This is what I do! Hear me roar… umm… or please see my Case Studies page.
Are you wanting to shout your services and great work to the world? Want to advertise without actually advertising? But what you do is SO fantastic how will prospective clients ever believe that you can achieve what you are shouting about?
We need proof they say…
Proof? you want proof? I’ll show you proof!
Please navigate to my case studies page…
Before you can have the perfect case studies page you need a few perfect case studies. Here are some tips on how to create a perfect case study.
5 things your case studies should include:
- Break it down – be sure to include a brief breakdown of the case study as an intro. It makes it easy for visitors to find the case study they are looking for quickly and without getting frustrated
- Images – images always make things more interesting, if you haven’t helped a client with anything tangible that you can include photos or screenshots of, then you can use stock images, just make sure they are well chosen, match the look and feel of the rest of your site and they aren’t cheesy! Fish Financial used some great quirky images for their case studies.
- Headings – breaking your case study into sections is a great idea – but make sure you include headings. Your visitor should be able to easily see who the ‘Client’ is, what the ‘Project’ is, where the ‘Challenges’ lay, an ‘Overview’ of how you planned to help the client, the ‘Work Required’ to achieve satisfaction, the ‘Solution’ and the ‘Result’ where you can say how everything was achieved and also how it has helped the company or client. Try using headings that actually help tell the story – such as “Helping a pet food company increase their earnings by 72%” or “Probate advice for a family of 8”
- Testimonials – these are the life of case studies. Testimonials give a name and occasionally a face to the case study – this helps people feel a connection to the client in question and can build trust. If you can convince the testimonial giver to let you use a picture of them, then that’s even better – CWB is a great example of this.
- Give me more! – if you have chosen to take our advice and have an intro to begin with be sure your site visitors can find the entire case study easily by either including a link to the full case study or a link to a downloadable PDF of the case study (something that visitors can download and read at their leisure). A Business Innovation makes use of downloadable PDFs for their case studies.
7 reasons to have case studies:
- It’s a great way to advertise without actually advertising
- It can help evoke emotion by discussing situations that other people may also be in (for instance financial case studies are very important as there will always be website visitors who are retiring, have been retrenched, or just want to save for a better future)
- People get a much better idea of what you do by reading real life stories
- It’s a lot less “salesly” to tell a story about the services you provide and to let the results and testimonials speak for themselves. You can list statistics to show how a company has grown, become more productive, or made more money. Numbers are always a great way to show how well things are actually working
- Everyone likes a good success story
- If your clients are also businesses they will get free exposure and SEO benefits
- By showcasing a variety of different types of clients, you have a greater chance of the reader identifying with ONE of them and understanding how you can help THEM.
Below are some examples of case study pages that we have done:
A Business Innovation
A Business Innovation is a company we regularly partner up with on projects. Together we have worked on some great websites AND case studies pages!
This page features all case studies on one page – company name, brief overview, and an image of the websites home pages. If you hover over the images of the home pages the image border changes to red and the website home page image is replaced with the company’s logo. See the cool feature here.
A Business Innovation also makes use of pages dedicated to each case study with a downloadable PDF.
Fish Financial
For the Fish Financial website case studies page we chose a fresh, clean layout to match the rest of the site. All 6 case studies are easy to navigate between with them listed on the left. When on a specific case study the left navigation boxes change colour to show you where you are.
The case studies themselves all have their own individual quirky image to go with them. They include a brief overview of the case study with a quote from the featured client and a PDF download to the full case study.
The Bespoke Wedding Company
The Bespoke Wedding Company has a great reason to have a case studies page. Being a wedding planning company there will always be lovely stories to share, but more importantly loads of amazing photos to show off.
The main case studies page shows all case studies with one large feature image, intro text and a link to the specific case studies. The specific case study pages include a full write-up on the event and the services they supplied. It also has a testimonial from the bride and groom and a lovely gallery to showcase the event and services rendered.
Prescience
Prescience is an integrated media company who focus on film production, financing and sales. They have helped fund movies such as ‘The Kings Speech’, ‘Chalet Girl’ and ‘Horrid Henry’.
Their case studies page needed to show all the projects they have helped fund, the projects that are soon to be released and even ones still in development. Their main case studies page just features the movies name and a recognisable image of the actors in the films, if you click on any of the movie names or the magnifying glasses a cool lightbox pops-up to give you an overview of the movie, from there you can navigate through them all.
Karen Haller Colour & Design Consultancy
Being a colour and design consultancy means that there will always be lovely pictures to feature on the case studies page. The main case studies page features 4 case studies – large images, intro, and a link to the full case study.
Each case study has its own page which features a full breakdown of the projects (using those fabulous headings), a testimonial from the client, clever links leading into other parts of the website and a lovely gallery to showcase the colour and design consultancy that was supplied.
OWL Regulatory Consulting
OWL is a Regulatory Consultancy who have helped many clients. They chose only 3 case studies to feature on their website. It’s a very simple layout and the full case studies all appear on one page.
Based on the fact that the case studies are quite small we used a great drop-down feature. So arriving at the page you see the 3 case studies, headings and images, and if you click on the ‘More’ link then it drops down to show the whole case study.
Clarkson Wayman Ball
Clarkson Wayman Ball are a finance company and have many success stories to share. As we mentioned earlier – adding a testimonial from the client is a great way to get your visitor to connect with the story. CWB managed to get their clients to tell their personal stories and was even able to convince their clients to pose for pictures for the case studies. This really gives a whole other level to them.
They have an individual page per case study which includes the full story, a photo of the client, a downloadable PDF of the case study, a testimonial and a brief introduction to the team members that worked on the project – this is a fantastic way to allow your visitors to ‘meet the team’ and also gives the visitor an idea of who could be working on their specific case. Brilliant!
