By:
Ben Herrington
on Friday, October 23, 2009,
under
consulting,
Stonehenge
It's funny how you start thinking about something for someone
else and end up thinking about it for yourself.
We've been working for the past six weeks to design a website
strategy for a local client, and as part of that we decided to
incorporate their Unique Value Proposition into the creative of
their site.
Now UVPs are Marketing 101, of course, but not all companies
know what their UVP is, in my experience, and of those who do, few
believe in it as much as this client did. Knowing who you
are, what you stand for, and how you differ from your competition
clarifies and guides so many creative decisions, from the
complexity of interactive functionality all the way down to the
size of the font.
This client knew their values, so it was easy for us to craft a
site that reflects those values.
Adapting a UVP to a case in point
Last week Marci
Roller and I got into an interesting discussion about the UVP
for StoneHenge Partners. Our UVP is something we have been refining
for a couple of years, and it's pretty solid now.
StoneHenge Partners is a team of information
technology professionals committed to a singular mission: We apply
technology to solve business problems. The firm specializes in
turnkey solutions delivered on time, on budget and on target, and
tackles such diverse projects as web application development,
legacy system migrations, and multi-tier system
integrations.
But Marci said she is talking to a company in need of a complex
e-commerce website, and that statement was too broad for them. She
needed something that speaks to our values as it relates to the
business problem they are trying to solve. OK, so here goes:
StoneHenge Partners is a technology solutions provider. We
deliver turnkey projects on time, on budget, and on target.
Guaranteed. How? Through something we call The Nimble Method - a
unique blend of four industry best practices:
- Pinpoint accurate scoping using Function Point
Analysis
- Disciplined project management
- User-centric creative design
- A hybrid Agile/Waterfall development methodology
This method has worked for a variety of e-commerce websites
-- from as large as an air-compressor distributor with 26,000
products and a car-rental company with 2.2 million transactions a
year to as small as a local florist, outdoor-sportsman store, and
real-estate management firm. In all cases, we partnered with our
clients to design, develop and launch a solution that uniquely fit
their needs. And in all cases, we delivered on time, on budget and
on target.
This is the first time this UVP has ever been published in
exactly this way (although variations of it appear lots of places.)
What strikes me about this statement (other than the fact that it
sounds sassy) is that it rings true. I didn't have to think about
it, much, to write it.
The point is this: It's not enough to have a generic UVP. You
must understand your company's unique values so well that you can
interpret them to speak to the other guy's need.