Mike Moran thinks that Six Sigma isn’t relevant to internet marketing

“Six sigma is an excellent way to deliver high quality with repeatable processes, such as manufacturing your product, but it is exactly the wrong goal in Internet marketing. “

Bryan Eisenberg, on the other hand,  thinks it is important enough to build into the web marketing process.

“It may sound like pure theory, but Six Sigma is practical and yields enormous return on investment (ROI). We apply its principles to Web marketing,…”

Actually, they are both right. Eisenberg is referring to a methodology to increase conversions once people are on the website. This is analogous to someone walking into a shop and should really be called  “Website Sales” and “Website  purchasing” processes as opposed to Internet marketing.

To be sure, Eisenberg does consider the source of the website visitor but this is analogous to the store salesperson sizing up the person who just walked in the door. Moran, on the other hand was actually referring to the actual marketing of the web site.

Six Sigma, Website Sales and Online Purchasing Processes

Six Sigma shines when it comes to improving manufacturing processes and can applied to the web site sales process as well.
Eisenberg puts it this way:

“Identify and measure specific service and process defects, then ask, “Why are they happening?” That question uncovers the underlying reasons for customer dissatisfaction and/or defection. Typically, there’s more than one reason. You’ll often find a half-dozen or more root causes contributing to the service defect.

… use surveys, pathing, content analysis, sales process analysis, persuasion architecture scenario analysis, time on page, and other data to determine root causes. “

Here is where we are straying too far off the six sigma path. Surveys (even though they are many times not accurate)  and web analysis (good at showing where the problem is but not why) can certainly help. Persuasion Architecture can be a good predictor but it is not based on our website data. Six Sigma process includes people actually reporting and categorizing defects as they happen—real hard data. This was relatively easy to do when we have people in a manufacturing facility or in a call center to do this while they are doing their regular job. But the whole idea of the web is that our internet site is doing the work for us so we can be doing other things.

How to find the defects

There are two things we can do to find out what our website defects that our website visitors are running into.

1. In usability testing we actually watch what our uses do and it is very easy to see what problems they are having with our website. This works better in early stages. As our website gets better and better we have to watch more and more users which is impractical and expensive. Also, due to the small number of users in a usability study we are not able to categorize defects.
2. We are now starting to see products that help us get hard data. They record user activity and are beginning to categorize defects. Tealeaf and  Coradiant are two solutions.

As the software becomes better we will be able to get closer and closer to using more of Six Sigma for Website Sales and Purchasing Processes. One thing they still can’ do is tell us what our visitors are thinking. We find this out buy asking people to think out loud during usability testing.

Six Sigma is great for improving the Internet Sales process. Can it help Internet Marketing too? That’s a good subject for another article.

The creation of an online Internet marketing test where anyone can contribute is an interesting experiment.

We all know the jokes about how groups are incompetent and this is reinforced by our experience in meetings where a lot of time is wasted. The other side of the coin is eloquently supported by James Surowiecki who wrote a book called The “Wisdom of Crowds”.

Social Media Internet Marketing Test
Ths Internet Marketing Test is a different kind of wisdom that I don’t think was mentioned in James Surowiecki‘s book as we are not just looking for answers. In this case we are asking people to contribute the questions as well as the answer.

It will be interesting to see if the Social Media Internet Marketing Test brings good results.

More…

I thought it was interesting that here inIsrael, Google and Microsoftlocated their offices very close to each other as you can see below.

I had to wade into the water so you could see how close the Google and Microsoft offices are. You can see my sandals in the foreground. Click to enlarge.

Israel is a very small country and it isn’t unusual for competitors to locate near each other. Many furniture stores are located near each other, so why not search engine and software  companies?

There are also great reasons to locate here in Haifa (full disclosure–my office is in Haifa too):

• A beautiful view of the beach
• Close to the Technion — with a great supply of excellent engineering graduates (full disclosure: I am a Technion graduate)
• Close proximity to freeway and train

Despite our marching towards a global village it seems like local customs still influence multinationals like Google and Microsoft. That is what allows companies that have competing search engines to locate near each other and enjoy the view together.

View of Mediterranean

Most of our website usability testing continues through the last step of the shopping cart but we usually don’t actually buy the item. However in our last test, I decided to get my wife a present and had the item shipped to my office so I could surprise her. I was pleasantly surprised when the present arrived the next day as I only requested regular delivery. However, when I opened the box my marketing instincts told me something was wrong. There was no promotional materials in the box—no catalog, no up selling, or cross selling.

Another lesson learned—usability testing should include actually ordering and receiving the item. I passed on the information to the company owner and of course she said, “You’re right—we will start including appropriate materials right away”.  My wife, by the way, was very happy to get a new outfit.

Do you think I can write the expense off my taxes under usability testing?

I found a web analytics book worth reading. Although I knew almost everything Avinash Kaushik wrote, I learned more from this book than any other one source.

Finding out what your web site users think by talking to them comes up many times in the book. This is very important, however smaller companies may not have the resources to do this offline research in a scientific manner. In those cases you could make contact with people who converted. Although this is a very special segment, it is better than not contacting anyone. As Avinash emphasizes, with web analytics most of the data won’t be perfect and we have to base our actions on what we have.

Comparing traffic trends to competitor’s on Alexa is another good idea, but the figures will not be accurate for small companies (and not completely accurate for big ones either as he notes).

MSN drives very little traffic to most of my clients, even if we have a no. 1 position in natural search and I tend to ignore it. Avinash points out one tip I really liked — the MSN search funnel. It shows you what people search for before and after your keyword. This can give you many insights and it is a lot of fun. I tried it with keywords for one of my B2B clients and nothing came up, as I expected. However it is worth checking out for more mainstream keywords.

Although I didn’t count all the graphs shown in the book from different web analytics packages, I have the impression that graphs from ClickTracks outnumber all the others combined. This is probably due to its ease of use and ability to show important information if you know what kind of labels you need to segment visitors. Ease of configuration should not be overlooked when choosing a web analytics package. As you dig deeper into your statistics you will find more and more things to check and configure and if you have to rely on your IT people it will slow you down.

Today we posted our SEO Cartoon Quiz. I hope it will create a lot of smiles in the Internet marketing community (I don’t think regular people will get the jokes). As soon as we finished setting up the quiz a lot more ideas started to come to us. Maybe we will have to put out another edition one day.

Before we answer that, let

Most people realize that different languages demand different keywords and strategies. However, English is a special case. It is now the de facto international language leaving Esperanto in the dust.

Not everyone pays enough attention to the fact that English is used differently by different users. There are more second language English speakers than native English speakers in the world Their use of English is different than native English speakers. There are also many different English dialects. North American English and British English are the most well known. Consider these examples where the first term is used by Americans and the second by the English:

• Diapers vs. Nappies
• Apartment vs Flat
• Elevator vs. Lift
• Uterine Fibroids vs. Myoma

Consider the following factors when working on an English Global Search Engine Marketing Strategy

• Use of different words to describe the same thing by different people
• People who know English as a second language have a tendency to make more typos and spelling mistakes when they search for keywords.
• People who know English as a second language use less sophisticated searches

All these factors should be taken into account when starting a Search Engine Marketing Strategy. Also, don’t forget to make sure your landing pages use simpler language for your visitors who use English as a second language.

Before the advent of the Internet, one of advertising’s most famous sayings was:

“I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising,” department store pioneer John Wanamaker said. “The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

Many times I use this to demonstrate the advantages of internet marketing over the old methods. By analyzing log files it is relatively easy to find out which advertising campaigns are working. However I now have a new saying:

“I know that only half of what is written about search engine optimization is correct. The only problem is that most people don’t know which half”.

Can You Believe What You Read About the Keyword Metatag?

I recently ran across an interesting report on SEO ranking factors. Here you can see that many SEO leaders don’t agree on basic issues. However, one subject where there is high agreement is regarding the Keyword Metatag. – it is of slight importance.

However, when you read the comments it becomes obvious that there isn’t much agreement about anything except for the slight importance. Many people are not really sure how Google relates to the Keyword Metatag and say: I think…, Probably.., I don’t think…

Others are sure that Google does not look at them at all. However, I know for a fact that Google does look at them because I have seen them in the SERPs (search engine results page). This is a rare occurrence but it does show that this tag is not ignored.

What Can We Believe?

This just goes to show that the best approach is to test things for yourself. And realize that for different keyword spaces and competition levels, you need different strategies.

The rule to optimize for only 1-2 keywords per page has been repeated so often that it has become set in stone. Actually, some people say 2-3 and others say 3-4. I did a check in Google for: optimize page “1-2 keywords” -searching. I replaced the numbers each time and the one with the most sites turned out to be 2-3. If democracy is truth then 2-3 keywords is the way to go.

So is it best to optimize each page for 2-3 keywords?

The truth is that it depends on the competition, back links and the importance of the keyword.

For example, if there is very little competition, you can optimize for more keywords on a page. Even if you don’t get a top position for each keyword you can still get traffic if you have a visible position (a visible position is defined by how many positions your persistent clients are willing to consider before starting a new search).

If there is a lot of competition you may want to create a new page so you optimize less keywords on each page. However if you can’t justify the time, you can also create an ad very quickly on the search engines. It is usually faster to create an ad than an additional page which has to be optimized. The results are also more predictable. The disadvantage is that you must pay for every click and costs have a tendency to go up with time.

In many cases you may want to create a new page and an ad to show on the search engines. Make sure to test to see if your ads are cannibalizing your natural search positions.

A strategy for each keyword

Depending on the circumstances you may optimize existing pages, create new ones, run search engine ads or use a combination of the above. Don’t rely on conventional wisdom regarding the number of keywords to optimize for on each page. Every keyword needs its own strategy.