Case Studies
A case study should survivebeing read sceptically.
Most agency case studies are a logo, a percentage and no way to check either. This page sets out the format every Negivu Digital case study will follow, the evidence each section has to carry, and the rules we hold ourselves to when we publish one.
Why the format matters
Three things make a case study worth reading
If a case study cannot tell you what the situation was before the work started, it cannot tell you what the work did. Most of them cannot.
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A recorded starting position
Without a baseline captured before anything is touched, every improvement is a claim. We record the numbers at the point of engagement, including the ones that are embarrassing, because that is what makes the later comparison mean anything.
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A diagnosis you can disagree with
The interesting part of any project is what we concluded was wrong and why. Stating the diagnosis plainly lets you judge the reasoning rather than the outcome, and lets you see whether your situation is genuinely similar.
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Attribution that admits its limits
Business is not a laboratory. Seasonality, sales hiring and market conditions all move numbers. A case study that claims sole credit for everything that improved is not being careful, and should be read that way.
The anatomy
What every Negivu case study will contain, in this order
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01
Starting position
The business, the market, and the specific state of the system on day one — traffic, enquiry volume, response times, conversion, tooling in use, and what the owner believed the problem was. Numbers recorded before work began, not reconstructed afterwards.
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02
What was diagnosed
What the audit actually found, including where the owner’s assumption turned out to be wrong. The reasoning is written out so you can follow how we got from symptom to cause.
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03
What was built
The specific work delivered — the pages, the automations, the integrations, the tracking — and equally what we chose not to build and why. Scope decisions are usually more instructive than the build itself.
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04
What was measured
Which metrics were agreed as the test, how they were instrumented, and over what period they were observed. If the observation window was short, it says so.
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05
What changed
The before and after, alongside the honest caveats — other things that changed in the same period, what we cannot attribute, and anything that did not improve.
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06
What we would do differently
Every project has a decision worth revisiting. Publishing it is the difference between a case study and a brochure.
Our publishing rules
Standards we apply before anything goes on this page
These are constraints on us, not on the client. They exist so that a number published here means the same thing as a number in your own reporting.
- No figure is published unless it can be traced to a source the client can verify
- The client reads and approves the full write-up before it goes live
- Percentages are always shown with the underlying counts, never on their own
- The observation period is stated, and short periods are labelled as such
- Anonymous case studies are labelled anonymous rather than dressed with a stock logo
- Work that underperformed is eligible for publication on the same terms as work that did not
Being documented. Negivu Digital is a new agency. Current engagements are being documented against the format above and will be published here as their measurement periods complete and clients approve the write-ups. We will not fill this page with borrowed or illustrative examples in the meantime. If you would like to speak with a client directly, ask on your strategy call.
How documentation happens
The write-up is a by-product of the build, not a marketing exercise
Case studies get written after the fact and badly when nobody captured anything at the time. We capture the record as the work happens, because the client needs it as much as we do.
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Baseline at kickoff
Before a single change ships, we record the current state of traffic, enquiries, response times, conversion and tooling. You receive that document regardless of what happens next — it is a useful audit in its own right.
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Decision log during the build
Every significant scope or technical decision is recorded with the reasoning behind it. Six months later this is what tells you why something was built the way it was.
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Measurement window after launch
Nothing is assessed on two weeks of data. We agree an observation period long enough to be meaningful for your sales cycle, and we report against it whether or not the answer flatters the work.
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Review and approval
You read the full write-up, correct anything you disagree with, and decide whether it is published, published anonymously, or not published at all. That decision stays yours permanently.
Next step
Ask us to show our working.
Book a strategy call. We will walk through how we would baseline your business, what we would measure, and what a case study on your engagement would have to prove.