Signs it is time to revisit case studies

There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. A few signals that case studies is due some attention.

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Problem, approach, result, in that order
• Numbers make it credible

What good looks like

Name the client if they will let you. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

The short version

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. Three things worth confirming about case studies before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Problem, approach, result, in that order — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.