“Urgent: need someone to convert visitors into buyers.”
You see this ad on outsourcing sites often. They’re usually from web site owners who are at a loss as to why their sites are receiving record number of visitors but only a few of them are clicking on the “buy” button. It’s one thing to say a web site needs visitor traffic. It’s another to say that visitor traffic needs to convert into points of sales. It’s a tall order and online retailers are scrambling to find out why that elusive word – conversion – remains elusive.
When e-commerce became a reality, people were dazzled with stories about how ordinary mortals suddenly turned into Internet millionaires. One client told us that his Canadian pet web site was attracting a lot of visitor traffic that a large New York company approached him and offered to buy his web site for an amount that sent his head reeling. He sold it of course and while he was pleased that his modest site attracted a high profile buyer who was ready to offer him a “sky’s the limit” figure, he couldn’t really explain why his site was so successful. “My customers just came and kept buying, that’s all.”
Our client belongs to that rare breed of web entrepreneurs who consciously or unconsciously, set up the right business model and possessed the tools to transform that business model into a cash cow.
Web Marketing: No Different from Traditional Marketing
Maybe it’s white hat marketing. Maybe it’s the pay-per-click concept. Maybe it’s pure and simple search engine optimization. Or maybe it’s Google and Yahoo demanding premium content. Whatever it is that influences the success of an online retailer, we find echoes of Six Sigma in action. The one principle we’re referring to is DMAIC – define, measure, analyze, improve and control.
After you’ve spent time talking to web site owners and reading white papers written by internet marketers, you realize that web marketing is no different from traditional marketing.
The only difference is speed. In traditional marketing, you use direct mail which gets to the customer in three to four days, unsure that the customer will even open it. In online marketing, direct mail is also used but is sometimes called direct e-mail marketing, auto-responders or landing pages.
These are all marketing tactics – or marketing tools – that are used over and over again to promote whatever it is a web site is peddling. The Dan Kennedy style sales letters and the freebies and bonuses are all tools. DMAIC, however, appears to be the motivational force that stands behind these internet strategies.
SEO: DMAIC in Disguise?
We’ll prove it this way:
Define: in Six Sigma, we define the project, the specific change, the parameters and the team players. In web marketing, we define the goal of our web site (e.g. provide information on pets and sell pet products), our target audience (dog lovers, cat lovers, children), and the players (web site owner, web site designer and administrator, affiliates and other merchant facilities).
Measure: the Internet is the most innovative of agents when it comes to measuring. We can measure visitor traffic, buying trends, the number of minutes a visitor stays on a particular web page, and the reasons why they navigate away. Google offers page ranking and analytics while others come up with other testing tools, one example of many is the Alexa toolbar.
Analyze: the analysis interprets the numbers. Why does our landing page discourage visitors from going to our home page? What keywords brought visitors to our site? Are our payment facilities secure? Is our check-out procedure cumbersome?
Improve: what can we do to increase visitor traffic? What kind of bonuses can we offer a customer for him to want to buy our product? Do we have post-sales strategies? Can we offer a newsletter for free? Should we create a forum to bring users together?
Control: our customers are signing up for our newsletter. Let’s not drop the ball. Let’s send them e-mails about new products and promotions. Let’s keep them from navigating to a competitor’s site. Let’s welcome feedback so we know what we’re doing wrong.
By engaging in good SEO practices, we’re actually putting the DMAIC approach into focus. Six Sigma isn’t just for the conference room or the factory floor. It works just as well on cyberspace.
Truth is, because of the volatile nature of e-commerce, we need a reliable partner like Six Sigma to help us in our sales and marketing efforts. There are a million web sites floating in space. Competition is fierce. Those that have set their sights on quality and productivity will survive.
Learn more information about 6Sigma.com’s Lean Six Sigma training coursework, available as classroom, onsite, or online options.
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