Writing a Project Story Instead of a Case Study

A results page nobody believes

Plenty of business websites have a case studies page, each entry following a template borrowed from much larger companies: challenge, solution, results.

The results line is where it comes apart. Efficiency up by a third, costs down sharply, satisfaction at the top of the scale.

Usually nobody measured any of it. The figures were estimated at the end of the job, because the template had a box to fill.

Visitors cannot check them either, and claims that cannot be checked read as marketing. The page meant to prove the work ends up casting doubt on it.

What a project story contains

A project story drops the results box and tells the job instead, in the order it happened.

• The client's problem, described the way they described it.
• The constraints: budget, timing, access and the building itself.
• What was done, step by step.
• Why each choice was made, including the options set aside.
• What the client said, in their own words, with permission.
• Photographs from before the work, during it and after.

The fourth is the one competitors rarely write. Anyone can show a finished job; explaining why one option beat another shows how the business thinks.

Why the percentages backfire

A percentage needs a starting point, a method and a period, and the visitor is given none of them.

There is a legal edge as well. Under the Competition Act, a claim about how well something performs has to rest on adequate and proper testing, and a guess typed into a template is not that.

A modest fact that can be checked does more than an impressive one that cannot. Four days on site, two trades, one weekend without a kitchen: a reader believes those at once.

Start with the client's problem

Open with what was wrong, in the client's terms: not the technical diagnosis, but why it mattered to them, such as the stair a parent would not use.

Visitors recognise themselves in the problem long before they understand the solution. Somebody with the same worry reads the first paragraph and thinks of their own house.

The easiest way to get this right is to note the client's words at the first meeting. They will be plainer than anything written later.

Explain the decisions

The middle of the story is the work, but not as a list of tasks. Say what you chose, what you considered and set aside, and why.

That is where expertise shows. Most visitors cannot judge a joint or a weld from a photograph, but they can follow a clear reason for doing something one way rather than another.

Mention the surprise, if there was one. A problem found and handled calmly is more convincing than a job where everything went to plan.

A worked example

A two-person metal fabrication shop that builds railings, gates and stairs had a case studies page with four entries. Each ended in a results line: improved safety, enhanced street appeal, a satisfied client.

None of it said what the shop had actually made.

The rewrite began with one job: steep concrete steps at the front of a 1970s split-level, where the owner's mother had stopped visiting because the wooden handrail moved under her hand.

The story explained the choices. The concrete edges were crumbling, so the posts were fixed to the sides of the steps rather than drilled into the tops.

The rail was given a round profile a hand can close around, and finished in the colour of the window frames.

Six photographs went with it: the old rail, the steps being measured, the frame in the shop, the posts going in, the finished rail, and a close view of a side fixing.

The client's comment, used with her permission, was not about steel at all. It was that her mother uses the front door again.

Photographs that carry the story

Photographs are the evidence, and most businesses only take the last one: the finished job, on a sunny day.

Shoot the before and the after from the same position. The shots in between, with the old work stripped out and the new half done, are the ones that prove you did it.

Add one or two close views of the detail that matters, such as a joint, a fixing or a finish. Caption every photograph with what it shows and at what stage.

Keep house numbers, licence plates and faces out of frame unless the client agrees to them.

Asking the client

Ask for permission early, when the job is agreed, and confirm it at sign-off. Clients who are pleased with the work usually say yes.

Agree the details in writing, even in a reply to an email: how they are named, how precisely the location is described, which photographs appear, and the words you will quote.

Quote what they actually said. Trim it only with their agreement, and never write a sentence for them to approve, since that is your marketing with their name on it.

Where the stories belong

Give each story its own page, titled with what was done and where, such as a steel handrail for a split-level in Port Moody, rather than Project 4.

Link each one from the service page it belongs to, where a visitor is deciding. A projects page can list them all, and the home page can show the newest.

Three to six hundred words is plenty.

The counter-case

Not every job can become a story.

Some work is confidential, and some clients will not want their home shown. A story can still describe the problem and the decisions, with no location and no faces.

Where a client genuinely measured a result and is happy to publish it, a figure is fine, attributed to them and with a note of how it was measured.

And a business doing dozens of similar small jobs a week may be better served by a captioned gallery, with stories kept for its larger work.

For most businesses, though, one real job told properly will persuade more than any number of results boxes.

Writing the first one

1. Pick one recent job you are proud of.
2. Ask the client for permission in writing.
3. Write the problem in their words.
4. Explain two decisions and why you made them.
5. Choose six photographs, before to after.
6. Quote the client exactly, with their agreement.
7. Link the story from the matching service page.

Step four is the one only you can write. The photographs show what was built; two decisions explained show a visitor what working with you would be like.

The same shift, from describing the business to describing the customer, is covered in an about page that never mentions the customer.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.