STRENGTHS

• MarketDial's website design is clean and professional, making customers feel secure and confident. The website for QA, which is one of the A/B tests leading companies, has a loaded and scattered design that does not facilitate a peaceful customer interaction.
• MarketDial offers A/B testing tools for offline commerce. The advantage of these tests is that clients can arrange them in just five minutes. This process prevents clients from becoming confused when dealing with big data.
• Echoing the sentiment that the majority of customers feel regarding big data, MarkeDial's motto is"Data Scientist Not Required."
• The company also offers its services for any retail function, something that makes them an inclusive business.
• These are some facilities that come with carrying out a test with MarketDial: The process to upload data is automatic, so clients do not have to perform it manually. MarketDial performs a market evaluation to add consumer demographics and possible competitive locations. If the client has a store attribute analysis, MarketDial also works with it. There is a broad assortment of applications that satisfy diverse client profiles. All data is highly-protected on their AWS servers.
• MarketDial initiated operations in the year 2016, and in just two years of its foundation, the company demonstrated to Crosslink Capital its potential and raised $7.5 million with series A funding.
• Another advantage of utilizing MarketDial is that it has a high usability rate, diminishing the usage of additional tools like other companies such as QA.
• The solutions MarketDial offers generates both short and long-term results.
• MarketDial was recognized as a fast-growing company, as well as one that uses brain power.
• MarketDial recently partnered with the REGO Restaurant Group to improve decision-making and obtain new business initiatives.

WEAKNESSES

• On the MarketDial website, there are no testimonials or reviews of their services. In the digital age, this indicates a significant flaw, since most large companies have digital evidence that verifies that they are not a fraud.
• Monthly visitors to the website have declined sharply. In January 2019, MarketDial received 11,000 visitors and only 374 in the month of May. These types of events drive many customers away as a person's initial reaction when observing those figures is to believe that the company is no longer operating and that it is withdrawn.
• On Twitter, MarketDial has just 112 followers, which is very low for a company. In modern times, companies should have more than 100,000 followers on social media to demonstrate validity.
• Only seven people have liked MarketDial's Facebook page, which is a concern.
• MarketDial has a blog, but it does not publish content often, and it is difficult for the client to locate that section, which is under the name resources. Furthermore, the last time it published content was on August 7.
• MarketDial also does not have a FAQ section on their website or online support.

OPPORTUNITIES

• Social Media: MarketDial needs to master social media. As mentioned in the challenges section, its online presence is atrocious, with less than 1,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook. This issue has a solution if the company is open to new ways of working, as it can increase the number of followers with several methods such as: interactions, offering online support via Twitter, or sharing small informative excerpts from its blogs to reach more consumers. (analysis based on the weakness section).
• MarketDial is a reputable company, but the average consumer does not explore for market reports, a comparative analysis, or statistics to ensure they are not a scam. The average client seeks a company with testimonials and reviews or will pay for company services because of positive word-of-mouth. While the last method works, it is important to provide testimonials on the company website to engage individuals from different areas. The solution to this issue is to create a testimonials section, and fill it with experiences from past clients. (analysis based on the weakness section)
• Businesses owners love to read articles that help them cope with situations that occur daily, which are the types of articles that MarketDial publishes. The only problem is the frequency. Increasing the publishing time could further engage potential clients. (analysis based on the weakness section)
• The importance of a frequently asked question page lies in the usability of the website. MarketDial's website is very client-friendly, but clients have concerns that require answers. As MarketDial does not have online support, and the only way to contact them is through e-mail, it is fundamental to incorporate a FAQ section to avoid ruining the customer experience. (analysis based on the weakness section)

THREATS

• Emarsys, a direct competitor of MarketDial, has more followers on Twitter (5,100) and has tweeted 143 times in the last 30 days, while MarketDial tweeted only eight times. As the evidence indicates, Emarsys has an advantage regarding social media engagement. They have also raised $22.3 million in funding and are ranked number 87,213 on Alexa.
• Also, Emarsys has testimonials on its website, as well as an active blog.
• A software review company is responsible for showing people unaltered opinions about software companies. The leaders in this space are TrustRadius, SearchMan, GoodFirm, and Capterra. MarketDial does not appear in any of them, which take us to the same point, a company without testimonials creates lack of trust among future clients.
• For a business seeking search engine optimization, the closer the company is to the top in Alexa ranking, the better. This is not the case with MarketDial as it is listed number 7,731,228 in the ranking.
• According to Crunchbase, SiteSpect is another direct competitor to MarketDial. The company has raised $13 million in total funding, and it offers personalized tests to clients, it has 10,230 followers on Twitter, 1,806 followers on Facebook, and an exceptional website with a very professional and clean design, along with a big clients bar.

Research Strategy:

Company features

• Unbounce offers options to customize webpages easily, a wide array of over 100 templates and an option to create own templates, options to duplicate and edit successful webpages, copy and paste elements, add custom JavaScript, CSS, and HTML to webpages, apply custom scripts universally across multiple pages, create AMP landing pages for mobile, create mobile-responsive pages, customize mobile pages, publish their landing pages directly to custom domains and publish pages instantly to WordPress.
• The software also comes with built-in Google Forms, automatic image optimization, SVG graphics, adding video backgrounds, visitor-triggered lightboxes, two-step opt-in forms, custom confirmation messages, gated content, Dynamic Text Replacement, A/B testing and a data dashboard. Additionally, to this, the software supports Google Analytics and various integration methods. Also, the company offers live chat with customer service, Single sign-on service, option to add unlimited users, IP filters and page version reversion (Source 2). The company also owns five worldwide data centers.

• Instapages' software offers scalable page creation, Ad-to-Page personalization, their Page Experimentation dashboard, Real-Time Collaboration services and Lightning-Fast Page loading Speeds.
• In addition to this, Instapage offers Google AdWords integration, Facebook AdManager integration, unlimited A/B testing, Heatmaps, "Drop-In-Pixel" tracking and mobile-responsive pages. Their "Thor Render Engine" increases page loading speeds by three times. Their "Instablocks" feature allows users to save, customize and reuse individual page blocks. They also offer Image Managers, custom fonts, keyboard shortcuts, invisible reCAPTCHA, Single Sign-on and 24/7 customer support services.

Unique characteristics of the company website

• On the homepage, a live chatbot is shown immediately after loading. The homepage demonstrates key software strengths in a lively manner, changing colors, switching from demonstrating one function to another rapidly. When scrolled down, the homepage lists brands that use the software, followed by the product description, which includes several conversions, business purposes of the product and company success stories (Source 3). At the bottom of the homepage, free trial options are offered.
• In the top bar of the homepage, the company immediately offers pricing information, placed among other drop-down menus ("Solutions", "Learn", "Contact" etc.). In the "Learn" drop-down menu, the company offers visitors to access the company blog, as well as landing page examples and instructions on how to create a landing page. The "Solutions" drop-down menu, benefits the product offers are segmented by business line (Ecommerce, SaaS, Agencies). By clicking on the business types, visitors are redirected to pages that highlight product benefits as they relate to the three business types.

• On its homepage, Instapage lists some large enterprises such as eBay, Skyscanner and Verizon as businesses that use their service. On the homepage, they also offer educational, instructional business content in the form of eBooks, blogs and videos.
• On the top bar of the website, Instapage has "customer" drop-down menu, which redirects to consumer success stories. In addition to the "customer" menu, they also have drop-down menus named "solutions", "products", "plans", where they list pricing options, and "resources", where they offer instructional content for business owners.

Website monthly visitors

• In July 2019, the website has had 1,75 million visits. The bounce rate for the period was 40.99%.

• In July 2019, Instapage website has had 1,65 million visits. The bounce rate for the period was 60,17%.

Competitive advantage

• Unbounce offers a 14-day free trial.
• Unbounce offers landing page creation and optimization without the need for coding.
• In comparison to Instapage, Unbounce offers lower Essential pack both monthly and annual pricing costs (Monthly: Instapage-$129, Unbounce-$99).
• Besides, Unbounce offers Email Marketing services, in contrast to instacart.

• Instapage owns "Advertising Conversion Cloud", a service that automates post-click stages in the advertising funnel.
• Instapage offers options for increasing Facebook Conversions. Their "Thor Render Engine" offers three times faster page loading times.
• Unlike Unbounce, Instapage offers custom code editing possibilities, both with Javascript, HTML and alternative scripts. Their software also offers font customization options, keyboard shortcuts, reCaptcha integration and 24/7 customer support, unlike Unbounce.

Advertising messaging

• Unbounce focuses on their landing page optimization solutions in their messaging. They also highlight the high number of brands that use their software.
• In their messaging, Unbounce also brings attention to specific business KPIs their software improves. This includes ROI growth, conversion rate increases and sales growth.

• In their messaging, Instapage focuses on the following KPIs as they relate to their software: increasing AdSpend conversions, digital advertising ROI increase, Google Ads conversion rate increase, CPA reduction, Quality Score increase and PPC campaign profit increase. They also bring attention to bounce rates reduction and engagement increase.
• In their messaging, they also describe their software positive effects on audience management, visitor behavior analysis and side-to-side webpage comparisons.

Research Strategy: