On Monday, we tried to answer the question, “what is your website for?” Today, we want to take on the natural follow up to that question.
Who is responsible for the website performance?
Again, this is a tricky question in many organizations. If I ask it, a number of hands might shoot up. The head of marketing says it’s her, or someone on her team. Is it the SEO? The designer? The person in charge of conversion rate optimization?
There are a lot of people in any company who have a stake in the performance of the website. The problem is, there is no one person in charge of strategy and decision making. And without that person to lead, what happens is websites are managed by committee. And that’s where things go wrong.
So let us map out an example of what a website team might look like. This can be used as a guide at your company, or modified to fit your needs.
At the top is the singular person who is responsible for the performance of the website. It doesn’t matter what this person’s title is. His or her role is to set strategy and make the final decisions as they relate to the company’s website.
Which includes:
- Landing pages
- Homepage
- Technology
- Design
- Functionality
- Checkout
- and more….
At the end of the day, this person will be judged based on the overall performance of the website, as measured by the key metrics agreed upon at the top of an organization.
He or she is supported then by teams responsible for SEO, conversion rate optimization, UX and creative, data and analytics, development, and advertising. Each of these people or teams share some overlap with the person in charge of web performance.
The data and analytics teams are measuring that performance and looking for ways to improve. The SEO aims to make changes on the site intended to earn higher rankings. The advertising team wants to improve landing pages and the overall conversion funnel.
And all of these teams converge on the person in charge. He or she is taking all of the ideas and prioritizing them based on need and value added. They are making the final decisions on what to test, what to change, and what to keep as it is.
A structure such as this leads to maximum accountability, because the individual success metrics for each team that touches the website roll up to those key performance indicators that matter at the highest levels. Strategy supersedes lower level tactics, and decisions can be made across teams in a way that makes clear the priorities of the company as a whole.
