How LEAN Manufacturing principles might apply to web strategy

I went to a seminar recently (The Growth Summit in Sydney) and had the fortune of listening to and meeting Guy Parsons from the LEAN Enterprise Institute in the US. He’s a guru on LEAN enterprise thinking which is all about continuous improvement by removing waste from business processes. The Lean philosophy was founded on Jim Womack’s research into Toyota’s operating principles.

Here’s Guy to explain the concept for you and how it might apply to your business:

How might it apply to your web strategy?

So the key message: your effort might be better spent reducing waste rather than adding value.

To find the waste (especially time – both your and your customers’/prospects’) in your web strategy, start asking some of these questions:

1. Data – Where in your business do you double handle data?
2. Customer service – Who answers the same questions day in day out? What are those questions? Can they be put online for your customers to self serve in a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list?
3. Qualifying leads – How long are the forms on your website? Do you need/use all of the information? Are the mandatory fields wasting your prospects’ time? (Guilty. We had feedback from a prospect on this particular issue last week and we’re in the process of resolving it now)
4. Website content – What is your most popular content? What is not visited at all? How much of your copy is adding value? Are the key words bolded or made easier to read?
5. Ecommerce – How simple is your shopping process? Are there steps that could be removed? Do you make it easy for people to come back and purchase again?
6. Email marketing – Do you know what information your audience enjoys? Which articles are most frequently read and clicked through? Which ones are of no interest at all?

The key principle of LEAN is that you’ll get more return for your time and effort by focussing on reducing the 99% of your time that is wasted, rather than trying to increase the 1% of value add.

With this philosophy in mind, go back to your web strategy and start looking at the areas of waste to reduce as much as you look at the areas to multiply.

Managed web strategy: If you think you’re not wasting any effort in your web strategy, then please call us and let us know what you’re doing! If you think there might be ways we can help to streamline what you’re doing though, then try us on 1300 258 394.

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