Let there be Web Departments

In many businesses, the website is managed by either the marketing or IT departments. Unfortunately, neither are really best suited for this initiative and inevitably it leads to a turf war where the only casualty is the website itself.

Your website is not a bastard of your brochures, nor an outgrowth of your group calendar.  Let there be Web departments!

IT departments are excellent at rolling out complex systems, but they are NOT best suited to developing user-friendly interfaces or establishing an online presence and Brand. Internal marketing departments are similarly fishes out of water. In the online world, it’s about the conversation.   Marketing, by contrast, is usually a monologue.

The better way around this is allowing the organization’s most public face (its website) be managed by a single, unified team – or Web Department.  As Jeffery Zeldman puts it, “Your website is not a bastard of your brochures, nor a natural outgrowth of your group calendar. Let there be Web Departments.”

Besides website management being split between two departments not best suited to do so, it’s usually grossly under-resourced.

Managing a successful business website is a full-time job.   Web Departments should have the experience and the authority to push new and valuable initiatives forward.   This would also help SAVE money over the long haul as teams would be better able to realign their website to new objectives instead of just burning the house down and starting over (what the word ‘website redesign’ really means).

Let there be Web Departments (internal or outsourced).   Your website will thank you.