The Situation:

The client, Traditional Life Sciences Inc., was looking to start an online business in the health and wellness space, targeted to Boomers. They wanted a starting-point e-commerce, content management and marketing system that could be managed by 2-4 people but that could handle sales of $5-10 million a year before it required a major overhaul. We were asked to recommend an overall technology strategy and then to submit a proposal for executing the work.

Our Strategy:

1. Use an inexpensive open source CMS. We contemplated WordPress but eventually went with Joomla.
2. Instead of building out all the desired functionality using custom code, we recommended “renting” the functionality by using SaaS applications (also called hosted or cloud applications).
3. We used our Canadian designers to design the Joomla site but then we had it built by overseas coders to keep the cost down.

The Execution:

We call it a web ecosystem because calling it a website is a bit misleading (at least we think so). The ecosystem consists of:

1. A Joomla front-end which manages all the pages, article and the merchandising of the products.  The products are managed through a powerful Joomla component called Virtue Mart which acts as the product database.
2. Infusionsoft is the real power behind the system. Infusionsoft manages the email marketing and marketing automation, the CRM (user/customer database) and the e-commerce. All the actual transactions are processed through Infusionsoft and then sent electronically for order fulfillment. It also provides all the e-commerce sales and order reporting.
3. Customer Hub is an Infusionsoft add-on that allows customers to do self service on their account like updating their credit card information and seeing their past orders.
4. Get Satisfaction is the ultimate in web 2.0 community based support and it powers the support forum.
5. Google Analytics gathers all the visitor and conversion data and allows the client to do detailed conversion and ROI analysis.

Most people working in e-commerce have figured out that building a nice site is just the beginning and that most of the effort actually needs to go into driving traffic to the site, getting visitors into some kind of marketing automation sequence and then testing different offers until they convert. Then you up-sell and cross-sell them, also using marketing automation sequences. So how do you do this with a staff of 2 or 3? If you try do it using Constant Contact or aWeber or any other stand alone email tool you’ll be importing and exporting data every day and spending your life trying to get it to interact with your shopping cart and your customer database. Infusionsoft is really the only application on the market that allows you to manage this kind of marketing automation engine and it’s built for small companies with limited online marketing resources. It’s CRM + email marketing + marketing automation + an e-commerce cart, all in one, all pre-connected and ready to roll.

Cost Savings:

The client mentioned that they had our functionality quoted by an agency that would have built them a custom solution. The quote was for more than triple what they invested using our approach.

Client Feedback:

Getting to the final product as specified, on time, and on budget should be “price of entry”, but in a fairly sophisticated integration like Zwell, cost overages and time creep is likely more often the rule than the exception. Jonathan and the Strategy Cube team hit the timeline, delivered against the budget (while still indicating where options and upgrades were possible), and delivered a result that exceeds our expectation.  Communication throughout was efficient and solid.  We are delighted with the result, and recommend Strategy Cube without reservation.

Rob Carscadden, President & CEO of Traditional Life Sciences Inc. and zwell.ca. June 29, 2010.

The site went live in June 2010. You can visit the site at www.zwell.ca

Screenshots:

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

The Problem:

The team at 7 Systems had a nice looking website but they were finding it expensive and frustrating to update the site because it required them to pay the agency who built it to make all changes and updates. They wanted to enable several of their people to easily add content and make text edits themselves without having to pay the agency every time.

Our Solution:

I shared with them how rebuilding the site on a WordPress system would give them a content management system (CMS) so they could update the content themselves and it would also give them a blog so that various members of the team could contribute stories to help sell the 7systems products. It would also help their site be found more easily in search engines because Google loves WordPress blogs because of how they are structured and organized. Many of our clients find their WordPress blogs get 2 to 4 times the traffic than their HTML site gets.

Recently 7systems wanted to run a contest so they asked us to design an inexpensive contest mechanism into WordPress so that they could create Athlete profiles and then have visitors register and vote for their favorite athlete story. See some screenshots here.

Client Feedback:

“Strategy Cube was a true strategic advisor.  Jonathan effectively presented a recommendation and then helped every step of the way in making sure the execution delivered on the ideas presented.  We’re seeing double the traffic and saving major money because we don’t have to rely on an agency for the constant updates we make to our pages and our blog.” Martin Rydlo, Co-Founder, 7systems.ca.

Execution:

You can visit the WordPress powered site we built for them at www.7systems.ca

The Situation:

My client is a new safety training firm and they required ground-up brand development and marketing to be able to present themselves professionally and generate awareness of their services.

Objective:

1. Develop a compelling brand identity for a small safety training company.
2. Acquire new clients for Insight Safety Services by making prospective clients aware of them and their services.

Strategy:

1. Start with developing a compelling brand identity integrating the concept of “people” as the object of the training and a contemporary design that communicates up-to-date expertise.
2. Build Insight Safety Services a professionally designed, custom website through which visitors from the ad campaigns can explore the company and its services and be encouraged to call or email for more information.
3. Add to the website an easy to use WordPress blog with a CSS template that matches the existing site. Teach the principal of Insight Safety Systems to use the blog to post articles and expert advice on safety training. Use our favorite WordPress Plugins to 1) automatically optimize posts for SEO and publish new blog posts to google and Yahoo, and 2) send the blog post content via RSS to Feedburner and other blog sites to drive additional exposure on the web.
4. Use locally targeted google adwords and facebook ad campaigns to drive targeted traffic based on keyword searches and content placement to the new ISS website. Also register the company with Google for visibility on Google Maps.

Execution:

Logo & Brand Identity:

Business Cards:

Brand Guidelines:

We created an 8 page set of Brand Guidelines to ensure continuity of the brand over time and different executions. Some example pages are shown here.

Website:

The website is live at www.insightsafety.com

Google AdWords Campaign:

Facebook Ad Campaign:

Other Print Collateral:

We also developed:

• Printed letterhead and envelope artwork
• Printed desk cards for training sessions
• An HTML email template
• A Word document letterhead template
• A Powerpoint template for presentations

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

The Situation:

My client is a 7 person physiotherapy clinic in Aurora, ON and until October 2008 they had a holding page for a website and were running no online advertising.

Objective:

Acquire new clients for LifeSpring Physiotherapy by making prospective clients aware of the physiotherapy clinic and its services.

Strategy:

1. Use locally targeted google adwords and facebook ad campaigns to drive targeted traffic based on keyword searches and content placement to a new LifeSpring website.
2. Build LifeSpring a beautifully designed but cost effective website through which visitors from the ad campaigns can explore the clinic and its services and make a decision to call or visit.

Execution:

The website is live at www.lifespringclinics.ca

Google AdWords Campaign:

Facebook Ad Campaign:

4″X9″ Rack Card brochure:

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com