We recently received a bad review from a small partner of a company that we do not take instruction from or ever speak to. He blames the decline in website traffic and overall business on a website redesign we created 3 years ago. This was after we launched their original website 5 years prior to that.
The review
“Our experience with Marketing Provisions has been extremely disappointing. After our website redesign, we experienced a significant decline in website traffic and online-generated business.
It ultimately took bringing in outside professionals to identify issues with our website, analytics, conversion tracking, SEO, and advertising setup. We relied on Marketing Provisions as the professionals responsible for these areas and expected proactive monitoring and answers when performance declined.
Instead, we had to seek outside expertise to understand what had gone wrong. The amount of time, money, and business disruption this has caused has been substantial.
I fully expect the response to this review will offer a very different version of events, likely accompanied by explanations of why responsibility lies somewhere else. At this point, that would be entirely consistent with our experience.
Based on our experience, I cannot recommend Marketing Provisions.
The response
Here is the expected response to Aaron, one of the partners of Lifetime Equipment that we do not take direction from, you should have provided the whole history instead of a baseless derogatory review.
Nearly 9 years ago in 2017, we designed and created the first ever website and Google Adwords campaigns for Lifetime Equipment. We have over 20 years of experience with website design, website hosting, email hosting, digital marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With our experience we quickly launched Lifetime Equipment off to a great start. In the summer of 2023, 5 years later, it was requested that we create a new updated website. We created a completely new website on an entirely new Content Management System (CMS) and ecommerce software due to the fact the previous software was becoming obsolete and abandoned for future development.
There was not a “significant decline in website traffic and online-generated business” as Aaron has stated. There was a dip in website traffic when the new website was launched on June 8, 2023. This was to be expected due to the differences in software features and transition to new website. From 2023 until the present, Aaron took it upon himself to bring in multiple outside 3rd parties to make changes to the website and Google Adwords campaigns without ever consulting us.
Throughout the years we have been frequently asked, by our main point of contact at Lifetime Equipment, to fix the problems caused by these outside 3rd party companies or even by Aaron himself. We recently recommended to move the website away from our dedicated server to its own environment due to constant malware issues, security breaches, and the 3rd party foreign companies deleting and installing software. We still currently manage the website updates, website hosting and email hosting. And yet, Aaron wants to point fingers at a website redesign from over 3 years ago as the problem for their traffic being down and business problems.
All we can do is provide a screenshot of traffic timelines from Google Analytics 4 that was started on Oct 2022 until now.
Their website traffic has been rising and declining sporadically over the past few years. We have done nothing but keep software updated and fix problems when asked to do so. We were just called in again this last June to find out why the phones stopped ringing for them. We found the answer in the Google AdWords campaign where Aaron admitted he added negative keywords for their main product they sell. We fixed it then Aaron handed the keys back over to the 3rd party to mess it up again. As you can see in the screenshot, the website traffic has declined so much in the past year, and Aaron wants to point a finger at us for a redesign (3) years ago. This is an insanely unfair review Aaron left us for nearly 9 years of working with them.
