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Design for Search Engine Marketing (DFSEM)
August 3, 2007 |
Have you ever imagined what it would be like if your clients’ website were created with Paid Search or various other forms of Search Engine Marketing in mind? For me that wish ranks right up there with Google sticking to its ’strict’ double-serving Adwords policy and Yahoo! Search Marketing’s customer service improving… Obviously those wishes are completely out of my control and, to some degree, so is the client website. In the best interest of this post I’ll just stick to proposing an idea that I think would help current and future companies looking to invest significant time, resources and budget towards Paid Search.
Design for Search Engine Marketing (DFSEM) is my idea for increasing customer satisfaction, experience and conversion. The idea is largely based on the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology. Typically when someone hears the term ‘Six Sigma’ they immediately associate it with words like ‘DMAIC’, ‘variation’, ‘cost reduction’, ‘defects’ and so on. Rarely is there a case when Six Sigma is referred to as DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify), which in my opinion is the best kept secret in the quality toolbox. And even though the DMAIC methodology is the more widely practiced compared to DMADV, and it does help to reduce variation, cost and defects, the fact is that if you have to implement DMIAC your product or services are already failing to meet customer requirements which assumes that they were not developed or created as well as they should have been in the first place. If you start with DMADV, which is essentially designing a product or service that achieves Six Sigma quality from the get-go, you would not need DMAIC as much.
The phases of Design for Six Sigma’s DMADV1 methodology look something like this:
Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) requirements.
Measure and determine customer needs and specifications; benchmark competitors and industry.
Analyze the process options to meet the customer needs.
Design (detailed) the process to meet the customer needs.
Verify the design performance and ability to meet customer needs.
DMADV as it Relates to Search Engine Marketing
Keeping the DMADV phases in mind and getting back to the idea of Design for Search Engine Marketing, the best opportunity for applying this tool should obviously be with the website itself before even considering opening up and Adwords account. If I had to sketch a rough outline of how to use DMADV to design a website for Search Engine Marketing it would look like this.
Define the goals of the website. Is the website to be used solely for branding or are there conversion goals? If so what are the conversion goals?
Measure and identify the key performance indicators (KPI) of the website. What factors are critical to the success of the website? Determine if customer requirements have been met.
Analyze which website platforms/ hosting services are required for success. What analytics package is needed to be able to measure the critical to quality KPI’s? The performance of the choosen should be best in class.
Design the website and test on a development server. And test again, and again. Use simulations and predictive modeling where possible to determine if the website is meeting internal goals and customer expectations.
Verify the website in real-time. Follow the DMAIC process if future improvements are needed.
The DMADV phases as they relate to Design for Search Engine Marketing are fairly elementary. It is only at this stage, when the website is designed with quality in mind, should Paid Search or other forms of Search Engine Marketing be considered. All too often I have witnessed clients jumping into Paid Search without fully testing the up-time of the website, triple checking the right analytics code is in place and not simulating a purchase. This practice always leads to failure.
Design for Search Engine Marketing is a sure-fire way to exceed the goals set for your website and create an exceptional customer experience.
1 Simon, Kerri. (2002, July 22). What Is DFSS?. iSixSigma.com. Retrieved August 3, 2007, from http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c020722a.asp
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Comments
2 Comments so far
As a current Black Belt, I love the DMADV approach to website development (why didn’t I think of that?). Do you have any templates or checklists I could use to try out the approach on a new website development project? I didn’t want to “re-invent the wheel” if I don’t have to
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