The Best Format for Case Studies

I am the kind of person who doesn't like to read a long case study to understand a company's capabilities. So I found the most effective format of case studies as follows:

First, list the client name and industry.
Secondly, use 1 para. to describe the situation before the client seeks your help.
Thirdly, use 1 para. to explain your solution to this client.
Fourthly, use 1 para. to paint a visual picture with numbers and stats of the result
Eventually, don't forget to get a testimonial from the client - better someone high-level so it can add some third-party endorsement power.

A good example I saw today is from an iContact case study at Updata's website.

iContact
iContact's Situation
In 2007, four-year-old iContact was growing rapidly, with a proven product and customer acquisition model. Management saw an opportunity to expand market share more quickly in the SMB email marketing solutions space, and needed working capital to finance their aggressive growth plans. iContact looked for an investor to fuel expansion while helping to navigate the challenges of steep growth, leading the Durham, N.C., company to team with Updata Partners.

Updata's Solution
Updata faciliated iContact’s increased investment in sales and marketing, and helped to augment and counsel the management which has since generated significant value, including expanding a customer base of 55,000 to more than 500,000 users just two years later.

Result
Revenues more than quadrupled from 2007-2009, and today iContact has solidified its position as one of the top two of email marketing solutions providers in the SMB market.

CEO Perspective
“Many investors are financially oriented. It is rare to have investors with operational experience. That they have...experience in the software as a service area gives us added faith in their advice. Their prior operational experience has been very helpful to us. With their help we have been able to grow and scale our business much more rapidly than we would have without them. And we definitely have good chemistry with them."

- Ryan Allis

Pretty neat, right? I took me only 2 minutes to read and get the point of Updata's capabilities. I recommend this format.

Google Analytics is a Magic Tool!

Lots of people are using Google Analytics to monitor their websites, and we all know something about it because it is well-designed to be intuitive and easy to understand. Today I picked up a few terms and learned in depth about how to best interpret Google Analytics results.I will try to explain in the simplest way as possible so I can remember.

1. Bounce Rate:
(in my word)
So basically, if someone click your website link but soon realizes they are on the wrong place and leave your website, GA tries to track them down and tell you these clicks are "bounced". So you can have a better idea how many people are REALLY viewing your page for good reason out there.

(from wikipedia)
It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

(I love formulas, so) Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Number of Visits

A visitor can bounce by:

• Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site
• Closing a open window or tab
• Typing a new URL
• Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site
• Session timeout

Google Analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik has stated: "My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis...."

So now the question became "how to lower the bounce rate if your website bounce rate is high"...So I kept on searching and found some answers as below:

First I read about how to measure bounce rates - not just overall bounce rates but to see how individuals land on different pages to view content. Here it is:
How to Measure Your Website's Bounce Rate
http://www.elated.com/articles/measure-your-website-bounce-rate/

And then I got some advice from the same author on how to reduce the bounce rate:
http://www.elated.com/articles/reduce-your-website-bounce-rate/