As Web Marketers, we are always concerned with measuring the benefit of marketing initiatives.  The return on investment and perceived business value are critical to departmental success and organizational effectiveness for marketing dollars.  Customized Customer Sites can and should be a viable component of your best marketing practices arsenal. There are understandable challenges with supporting the creation of customer websites, but an examination of the benefits and a specific use case will demonstrate a clear return on investment, when approached correctly by your business. 

Benefits of Customer Sites:

• Retention – According to a number of open Marketing sources, along with most Customer Relationship Management literature, specific mention is made of the importance of customer retention and the impact to revenue growth.  The cost to gain a customer is typically three times more costly than to keep a customer.  Many Fortune 1000 service providers provide unique websites for their customers.  These sites are used to retain users and keep them connected to the services provided.  In the business communication space, many competitors will offer sites and at times, creating a site is necessary to land and retain an account.
• Revenue Generation – Having a central point for customers to find out about our services, all with designs that show a relationship to their brand provide an environment for customers to signup and purchase our services. 
• Brand Association – When customer sites are built and a specific brand is associated with our host brand Premiere Global, we are able to reach a broader audience for our brand.  The fact that it is associated with an internal company audience, Premiere Global becomes more than just a name, but a visual brand association.
• Cross Sell & Up Sell – As you build rapport with customers, they become prospects for other services and products your company offers.  You now have a captive audience with affinity for the originating service and that can translate into increased revenue.  This method can also be leveraged to resell services provided by partners.
• “Campaign Central” – A permanent customer site serves as a gateway and central landing point for managing a customer account.  When “tickler” emails are sent to boost usage and/or to promote other solution offers, the customized customer site is “campaign central”.  It becomes a place for account holders to learn, manage, and signup for services.

Challenges:

• Resources Impact – Creating customized customer sites requires significant attention.  The more customized the site, the more time it takes to get the site launched.  The value of high customization seems to correlate with increased revenue opportunities.  However, the human capital required to achieve success must have design and Web development skills.  It requires focused attention by the site strategist, designer, and development team, with multiple rounds of review of both the internal stakeholder and external customers.
• Time Constraints – The customization of sites can take anywhere from 8 to 40 dedicated man hours depending on your company and the site complexity.  The customization of a site and the approval of sites by stakeholders can take as many as 2 to 20 business days.  If there is brand adherence sensitivity, then customer review and feedback could take even longer.

Use Case:

This examination is of a project and subsequent tracking of a customer site for a Fortune 500 company located in the Midwest.  A dormant site, not significantly used by the customer was redesigned and enhanced with content and new architecture. 

The new site was created with a greater emphasis on a look and feel more inline with the customers existing main website.  Content for the site was increased by over 300% from the existing site.  The structure, architecture, navigation, and content construction was significantly modified to improve the site usability.  Charts were added to demonstrate product benefits and features. 

The Account Manager certified a 15% lift after the launch of a highly customized site from a rudimentary or more generic customer site, thrusting it into a top 20 account listing.  There were approximately 35 hours spent on the development of the site.  Given the cost of resources and the resource hours spent to create the site (37 hours times an estimated $40 hourly cost) at an estimate of $1500.  Although the estimates of services were far greater than monthly revenue of $10,000, a 15% lift in revenue on that revenue base would equal a monthly increase of $1500 and $18,000 annually.  If you replicate this success across 50 customers with similar revenue potentials, than the impact to the overall business could be as much as $900,000.

In Summary:  Customized Customer sites that have appropriate volumes of information, focused branding, cross selling modules, and robust site navigation and architecture, will add significant revenue opportunity to your company.  Every effort should be made to streamline the process of creating such sites and expand the number of accounts available for the customization.  With increased resource allocation, business focus, and process efficiencies, strong revenue additions will be achieved for your business.

Michael Buckham-White 
Director - Web Strategy & Strategic Initiatives
Premiere Global Services (NYSE: PGI)
michael.buckham-white@premiereglobal.com
www.PGiConnect.com