The Convertri Guide to Writing an Awesome Case Study

If we one thing do well at Convertri, we make beautiful fast-loading pages.

If that’s not enough for you, we also do pretty neat case studies.

Don’t believe us? You will soon: we’ll be posting them up on the blog. In the meantime, you can take our word for it.

Case studies are important. They tell a story, communicate your value to future clients, update your team on the results of a project, and make great shareable content.

But they’re not always easy to do, especially if:

Your project actually wasn’t that interesting
The results weren’t great
Whenever someone says the words ‘case study’ the world goes into black and white for a minute and you have awful flashbacks of long, go-nowhere meetings

Luckily, there’s several ways to make your case study a lot more interesting – or at least, save people from falling asleep during your PowerPoint.

The key is telling the story.

Stories are not boring. They are triumphant hero’s journeys against insurmountable odds – so kick back, put on a DVD of the Hobbit and tell your boss it’s research.*

It’s not about fancy charts or the swooshiest of transitions (although who doesn’t love a good star-wipe?). It’s about the emotional rollercoaster you endured while you raised conversions, appeased customers and smashed targets.

So start at the beginning, add some juicy chunks to the middle, and finish off by wrapping up your results in a neat little summary. Along the way, this is all you need to remember:

The Case Study Hero’s Journey Outline:

In every heroic blockbuster, the movie starts off by letting us see his normal life, then introducing a challenge to solve a problem. Hero goes on the quest – hitting multiple obstacles along the way – until he finally cracks it, or cracks himself. In your case study, this translates into a simple formula:

Background – what’s the ‘normal’ situation your case study begins with? Fill in some need-to-know info here.
Problem – what’s the challenge you endeavoured to solve?
Methodology – how are you (the hero) going to solve it?
Obstacle! Obstacle! Obstacle! – describe your journey, the experiments you ran, how everything went: the meat of the case study. Spare no gory details.
Conclusion – was it a happy ending, a cliffhanger or a pratfall? Or did it just kind of fizzle out? Present your results, and your opinions: and perhaps pitch a sequel?

The details…

Of course, you’ll need to make your case study sparkle for your audience. Keeping their attention isn’t just a matter of presenting a logical story structure with a compelling and rational conclusion: it helps to add visual puns.

Make it interesting. Simple – or rather, it sounds simpler than it is. Creating an out-of-the-box case study requires a bit of the gift of the gab, so if your patter is drier than toast you might want to enlist a more entertaining friend to translate your blow-by-blow account. Use an engaging, witty voice, and make it something people want to read.
Use real numbers. Vague is not vogue, dahling. Ever written the words “doubled traffic” without clarifying if this was enough to fill a stadium, or the number two bus? Use concrete figures, and say “from 10,000 to 20,000”.
Play with formats. Instead of the usual PowerPoint, could your case study get across the same information in a beautifully designed infographic? Or an interactive website? Puppet show? One-act play with ensemble cast? You decide.
Be #authentic. It’s trendy, y’know. Human life is a comedy of errors, and sometimes not very much happens at all. Don’t fudge, dress up or fabricate results – tell the story, warts and all.

Finally – be proud!

Your case study isn’t some boring white paper doorstop – it’s a work of art.

So show it off!

Post it to Facebook, make a video for YouTube, distribute amongst your shareholders or use it as a lead magnet – the point is that it’s well-written, so it’s a valuable piece of content. Refer back to it often, and make your published piece the envy of your competitors.

Don’t forget to check back here for our own Convertri case studies!

*Don’t blame us if you get fired for this.