Case Study - Arks
Company Background
Arks is the national leader in church building and finance. They help churches and Christian Organizations of all sizes build and expand their facilities. Arks is unique because as a ministry-minded design and building company, they also provide the construction financing that some churches need.Vision
Arks vision was to maximize the web channel to generate quality leads and sales.Solution
We started the process by accessing the state of the current website. Upon review of the website statistics, it was clear that while the content of the site was good and actionable, the logistic and usability aspects of the website design had many opportunities for improvement (see our discussion on 3 elements of Website Design Success). Here is the screenshot of the old website homepage.
After several meetings with the Arks team, we outlined a list of opportunities for the new website. We also created a comprehensive web marketing plan. The plan addressed integration of the new website, organic optimization efforts, as well as pay-per-click campaigns.
We started with the website redesign. The first step of the process was a comprehensive analysis of the website target audience. Based on the information we learned from the analysis, we finalized a general concept for the new website's look/feel, as well as key communication messages of various site sections. Here are several conceptual screenshots of several options we considered in the process.
The website was coded using PHP for dynamic website sections; CSS; Yahoo User Interface framework, for the overall layout and Javascript functionalities; and Adobe Flash/XML for the slideshow.
We also researched, setup, and launched Google and Yahoo pay-per-click campaigns. A number of landing pages were developed for each adgroup. Finally, we setup a tracking mechanism which enabled us to track conversions, ROI, and multiple other metrics.
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Marketing Dir., Regent University
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