Elder Research Website Redesign Case Study

The Challenge

Underperforming Digital Presence and Thought Leadership

Elder Research is a leading data science firm providing an array of companies and industries with advanced predictive analytics.

Despite their depth of expertise, their website failed to reflect their savvy and capabilities—directly affecting their competitiveness.

Further, as prolific writers and speakers, Elder Research was creating a plethora of content to showcase their thought leadership. But without using that content to engage web visitors, their website didn’t develop new business as it should. As a result, their website was solely a brochure site, affecting business growth by creating daily challenges.

Ready to revamp their website into a genuine sales tool that drives business growth, they contacted Whittington Consulting for expertise and guidance.

No Digital Sales Funnel

Without an in-house sales team, Elder Research’s brochure website was their main prospecting tool. Yet, they weren’t successfully using their website to increase sales and didn’t realize how technology could empower their efforts.

They were unable to identify which companies were visiting their site or gauge lead interest as individuals browsed the website, so their warm leads turned cold quickly. Consequently, traffic was low, averaging 90-110 visitors per day.

Old Elder Research homepage prior to redesign

Surface-level Website Analytics

Despite being a company filled with sophisticated, smart data scientists, they were not using valuable website data to guide their sales efforts.

By relying solely on Google Analytics, Elder Research had no ability to identify which companies were visiting their pages and what pages visitors from those companies were viewing. This lack of meaningful data left them reacting to audience behaviors, rather than predicting or guiding them.

No Strategic Content Marketing

Though they were producing a breadth of content, without a digital sales funnel strategy, they failed to gain the new business opportunities they could have received.

As a result, they were sitting on a gold mine of meaningful content that was not generating personally identifiable leads. In addition, their lack of a mobile-friendly website further hurt their content’s performance.

"They spent a fair amount of time understanding our business and project requirements to the point where, after the meeting, our vice president commented about how impressed he was with their level of knowledge and detail. They went far beyond focusing on what it should look like, and instead, spent time understanding our business and customer personas, and how that affects design."

Paul Derstine Director of Marketing

Our Solution

A Digital Sales Funnel Backed by Behavior Intelligence

To meet Elder Research’s sales goals, we knew they needed a robust website that could improve sales matched with modern technology that reflected their firm’s data science capabilities.

In every step, Elder Research had direct contact to our team’s leadership, following through on our commitment of providing clear, ongoing expert support.

With a goal to double their website traffic in one year, we hit the ground running — and engaged their team through a hands-on process:

Identify The Roadblocks

Our first step was to actively listen. Only by understanding their unique challenges and sales goals could we offer new perspectives.

Analyze user-navigation needs

A successful website relies on solidly understanding the behaviors that audiences will take. Before rebuilding their website, we carefully analyzed user personas to build a plan that meets the needs of how their specific audiences search and experience content.

Turn content into strategic sales tools

The variety of their existing content — from blogs to white papers to presentations — allowed us to develop conversion paths. These strategic paths guided web visitors to explore resources and drive true sales. In addition, we helped them prepare for future content and set up a system that enabled their team to continue generating leads when posting new materials.

Connect behavior intelligence gathering software on the website’s backend

Elder Research needed more sophisticated data to support effective sales outreach. So, we built HubSpot marketing and sales software into the their website that offers them a daily Prospect Report. This tool gives deep behavior intelligence data about which users interact with their content and how.

Provide education that empowers

Educating our clients is a natural part of our support. Rather than only revamping their tools and digital presence, we wanted to ensure they could independently manage their own tools with informed perspectives.

The Result

A Digital Sales Channel That Grew Opportunities by 10x

Elder Research’s once under-performing website is now a robust sales tool they rely on daily. Their website is their #1 tool driving business growth.

Now, not only do they have an engaging, mobile-friendly website they can easily update, the site accurately demonstrates their thought leadership while strategically driving audiences to act. In addition, their Prospect Report posts live data informing them of daily website visitors on a micro level. Elder Research now successfully offers a rich content experience that showcases the firm’s value and expertise while capturing deep user data that fosters business growth.