Are You Managing Your Website For Maximum Effectiveness

Continuous Improvement Process

Welcome to another in a series on the "Vital Few" Web Best Practices, this one 1983 Fleer baseball cards on Continuous Improvement Management

Traditionally, websites are updated many months or even years apart. This "All-At-Once" or "Big Bang" approach essentially produces a new website at these major rework cycles, creating a new look-&-feel for web visitors to learn. Usually they are not happy. Major redesigns usually don't solve problems. Instead, they generally create a whole set of new user 1982 Fleer baseball cards issues to solve.

Dart Throwing Web Management Style

This is management by throwing darts. That leaves you too vulnerable. If the site upgrade / redesign doesn't work, there went the budget. Your Conan returns and your poor customers are out in the cold until the next spending cycle.

The web has a huge risk/reward ratio but a more systematic approach is needed to exploit it.

"Continuous Improvement" is a web management process Howard the Duck proven to produce a more predictable set of outcomes. It's an approach where website refinements and optimization happens continuously in incremental and iterative improvement steps. Visitor responses to web page factors are continuously monitored to inform decision making on each new set of incremental refinements.

No More Black Box

We find most small to mid-sized businesses (SMB) overspend on non-productive web assets and under-utilize the more highly impactful ones. A systematic website improvement process dramatically reduces the amount of dilution of your website budget due to inefficient expenditures.

It's called "Iterative Web Improvement Management"
Iterative Improvement Management, insteaf of a one-time web upgrades or redesign, it's a process. It's characterized by small, manageable, narrowly defined and incremental steps that are cost effective and transparent.

Advantages of Iterative Website Improvement

1. assures a tight connection to organizational goals and objectives,
2. insures financial visibility, transparency, minimum risk, shorten time cycles,
3. understands the web page factors that most positively influence visitor behavior,
4. informs successive steps in site improvements.

Benefits:

• Immediate Results - Turnaround cycles on website improvements are measured in days, not weeks or months.
• Eliminates Risk - The process loop is a constant source of feedback, providing information that justifies costs and informs actions at every small step along the way.
• Reduces Costs - Inexpensive to implement. The system is designed to accomplish tasks on small budgets and in short time frames.
• Highly Effective - Eliminates guesswork, trial-&-error and rip-&-replace strategies of website improvements. Focuses your web efforts on information and knowledge.

This process is data-driven. There is no evidence that intuition works in such a complex and sophisticated environment such as the web.

Here's the process in a nutshell.

1. Select a Task - Select a feature of your website - a sales funnel or task process to improve upon,
2. Make Improvements and Publish Them - Select one or multiple variables on which to make incremental site refinements or to perform web optimization testing,
3. Track and Measure - Track and measure visitor behaviors in reaction to your site refinements,
4. Evaluate - Evaluate metrics and data on visitor behavior,
5. Diagnose - Diagnose data and understand meaning,
6. Make corrections and refinements - Implement refinements informed by feedback data, and
7. Publish Improvements - Repeat Process - Publish the work to the website and repeat the process.

We've all heard this principle, focus on the process and the results will take care of themselves. Today's web is a highly sophisticated environment. On a limited budget, you can't do it any other way. You need intelligent access to information and the smart use of it - how that information is turned into action.

SMB websites on limited budgets find success only by knowing which web efforts are included in the "Vital Few" high impact best practices and then how to execute those well over time. A continuous improvement process is designed for limited budgets and small-team efforts as a way of better managing website outcomes. Try it. You'll like it. Install Iterative Improvement in your web initiatives and you've see dramatic improvements in your conversion rates and business results.

Ray Champagne is President and CEO of successfulwebsuccessfulweb Successfulweb. The company has been in existance for eight years, assisting small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and web development firms do a better job of creating more effective websites.

The company uses its proprietary information system to make small-budget website success possible. SMB websites see increases in conversion rates by up to 500%