Item: WebCEO
Rating: 9
Author: Peter Green

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Web CEO to provide SEO services to our client base. We use it to analyse websites, select keywords, analyse competitors' websites and inform decisions on improving site rankings.

Pros and Cons

Website Analysis
Keyword Analysis
Site Reports

Search engine submission. Sometimes WEB CEO mixes up sites in the reports from search engine submission and mails to the wrong client. We now have to mail all reports separately.

Return on Investment

We provide much better services to our clients using Web CEO than using our previous methods. More is done by the system, less manually and the overall service we can provide is better.

Alternatives Considered

We looked at several other products, trialled some of them, but Web CEO was more feature rich than many and gave the best ROI of any that we looked at.

Biggest question is to decide whether you want software on your server or to buy software as a service.
We continue to prefer having the database in-house. We are getting good support but the one issues we had has now been satisfactorily resolved through the issue of a new dll. The program now works perfectly.

Users and Roles

3 - Website Optimisation Team, Web designers.and pre-sales.
We use WebCEO to evaluate content and tags on new and existing sites and as a part of regular website reviews.
We also use WebCEO to evaluate the existing sites of prospects to assess what might be wrong with their existing site as an aid to our sales team
Finally we use WebCEO as an aid to our SEO services

Support Headcount Required

2 - Standard IT support / Knowledge of SEO. The support of the tool falls very much on our regular internal support team and processes but to be fair the amount of support required is very low.
The skills that are required are Analytical Thinking, Knowledge of Windows (in our case Server 2012) and Understanding of email and IP Tags

Business Processes Supported

Search Engine Submission
Key Word Optimisation
Competitor Analysis

Innovative Uses

Checking new sites
Changing adword campaigns
Supporting pre-sales team with information

Future Planned Uses

Offering a greater range of optimisation services
As part of a sales campaign

Likelihood to Renew

We resell services that we base on our use of Web CEO. It (or something like it) is now an essential part of our business model.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability

Looking at alternatives WebCEO had the most comprehensive set of features within our budget range. We want analysis tools and submission tools and WebCEO has both.
The product is easy to use and does not rely on having to do every thing. Analysis can be done for one site, submission for another. The competitor analysis is particularly usefaul

Evaluation Lessons Learned

We have a well established software selection process that involves weighted scoring of the most important features - we would do the same again. In future we might select a greater number of products to evaluate to provide greater confidence in the selection, but for a product of this value we are unlikely to carry out protracted trials.

Implementation Rating

No. The difficulties were much of our own making. The installation of the software was simple and trouble free but our own initial use was less straightforward and we did not thoroughly think through how certain aspects of the system would be used. Thus we had initial inconsistency between different users of the system, which had to be resolved later.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - Since the implementation of WebCEO we have changed many of our business processes. As a result implementation of a similar solution would be much more smoothly integrated into our normal operating procedures.

Implementation Issues

Transition from test system to live

Support Rating

Because we had one longstanding issue that took a long time to be satisfactorily resolved. There seemed to be some difficulty in finding the root cause of the problem but they persevered and eventually a solution was found. It seems that it was a true bug but one that took some tracking down and a new release has solved the issue

WebCEO Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Bug Resolution

Yes - We had a longstanding issue with WebCEO. Their technical team had been looking at it for several months before a solution was found. Everything is now fine.

Exceptional Examples of WebCEO Support

Their response to the bug has been good and they worked through until it was resolved even though only we had reported it.

Usability

In general it is easy to use. Some of the functions take a little getting used to and first time through it is not obvious what needs to be set up first. It would be a great improvement to have a central setup screen where all of the data required by each module could be entered in one go.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using	None

A Comprehensive Site Optimisation Experience

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Web CEO