the case of client X

I am calling my real client "X" to protect him/her from potential embarrassment.

X came to me with a problem, a big problem. His web site was down, in fact it, was gone. He had not paid his hosting bills because his web site was not getting him any business. He thought this problem was the fault of the hosting company, so he did not pay them. He had also lost one of his domain names in the confusion. Someone bought his most valued domain name and was now using his address to promote the businesses of his competition. His business was dying for lack of customers, and he did not understand why, until I explained the situation he was in. This is by far, a worst case scenario.

We went to work. I bought him a new domain name, similar to his lost one. Then I negotiated with his last hosting company to release his other domain names and accept payment for past due hosting charges. This they did, even though my client had been hostile to them and threatened to sue the small, local hosting company. Needless to say, he hadn't earned any good will with the owner.

Once we had a domain to work with, I set out to build him a site. His last site was taken in whole from a printed brochure and was atrocious. There was nothing new, it was poorly arranged, and the text was full of typos. I worked with my client to clean up the text, get it properly arranged and formatted for clarity.

Once the site was done it was clear he needed a method for turning his web leads into customers. I worked with him to develop a contact management system using an off-the-shelf program. I customized the program to his needs and standardized his communication with his leads to insure none of them fell through the cracks.

The next step was to get him started advertising on Google with Google AdWords. I found a niche market for his business and wrote an ad campaign to attract these customers. Soon he had more inquiries about his product than he could handle. More staff was hired to handle the inquiries.

We then found that there were weak points in his sales process. We began redesigning his print materials, made adjustments to his site, tweaked the contact management system, and I trained new staff members. We continue to work together to insure his business grows and succeeds.

His competition still uses his old domain to advertise their products, but now his site is so easy to find this really is not much more than an annoyance.