Got a website, now for a web team…

If you’ve got a website, you may be asking yourself questions about the people needed to manage it - the web team.

As you can imagine there’s no one size fits all solution. Web teams are as unique as fingerprints. But just like a fingerprint, the composition of your web team is a defining feature of your site’s identity.

Perhaps you started a website and it’s grown beyond what you can manage single-handedly. Or perhaps you’ve already got a web team, but it’s not quite delivering what you expect. Whatever the reason, it’s a good idea to check that the balance of skills in your web team is reflective of what you are trying to achieve.

Once you know what you want from your web team, there is a multitude of job titles and roles out there. Designers, developers, interaction designers, user interface specialists, usability specialists, information architects, producers - take your pick, the list goes on. Navigating them can be frustrating, time consuming and confusing.

What is worse is that you can easily hire someone with the wrong skill set. And that’s not as uncommon as you would expect on web teams.

What you should be thinking about

The first step is to understand why you have a website and what you want from it. Your web teams’ skills should reflect this - if you’re running an e-commerce site but don’t have anyone looking at the financial side of things, you’re going to get into trouble very quickly.

With a clear understanding of why you have a website, some other factors to consider include:

• Understanding the nature of your site. Is it primarily used by people seeking information? Do people use your site to complete some sort of transaction? Do you have some sort of unique functionality?
• Understanding what turns your users on. What are they getting out of your site? Do they want entertainment? Are they looking for facts? Or is it a community site?
• How important the website is. Is it a “nice to have” or is your (organisation’s) financial security dependent on it
• What your technical capabilities are. Have you got a relatively simple site built in html, or are you accessing data from umpteen different systems? Have you got a friendly developer to talk to when things go wrong? Or do you pull out the ‘Dummies guide to…’ series and start reading?
• Where are your development opportunities. Do you want more users? Do you want more out of each user? Or do you want users to be more active?
• What problems you face. Nothing gets delivered on time? Everything seems to take a lot of effort? Or does it all seem out of control and you don’t really know what is on the site and what isn’t?

These are only few high level questions but they should get thinking about what you need from your web team.

Who does what

he next step is to understand some of roles out there and what skills they bring to a web team. This list is by no means exclusive, but is a good start, to get your web team started in the right place.

Web designers

It’s hard to have a website or web team without having a web designer, although the role is often incredibly broad. There is also a large range of skills on the market, but thankfully the number of cowboys is reducing.

A web designer should be able to design a site for you and may well be able to build part, if not all, of it. On larger projects they take wireframes and develop them into what the site should look like. However on smaller projects they may be involved in wireframing and building the site as well. When assessing potential designers it is worth probing where their interest and experiences lie on the wireframe, design and build issue so you don’t unnecessarily duplicate skills in your web team.

Web developers

Developers make things work. They usually specialise in one or a number of programming languages and are primarily concerned with how a site functions. Backend developers look at making your site work with databases and systems. Frontend developers look at making sure the interface works when users interact with it, both from a build and a design point of view.

Backend developers may also be known by the technology they specialise in – ASP developers, .NET developers, PHP developers, JSP developers, etc.

There is often considerable overlap between frontend developers and designers, interaction designers and user interface designers.

Information Architects

Information architects, or IA’s, look at structure and how everything is pulled together. From site maps and taxonomies to business rules and wireframes, IA’s are usually responsible for the overall “blue print”.

IA’s often have project management skills as they are often in a good position to see the overall picture on projects.

The term IA can mean different things in different industries and an IA for a web team should not be confused with a pure IT IA who may be a technical architect looking at the infrastructure of IT systems.

Web producers

Producers tend to focus on the production side of a website, and that can often be distilled into “getting it out the door”. Like project managers they are concerned with ensuring what is delivered is on time, on budget and satisfies the brief, however they often work more closely with the rest of the web team and may even get there hands dirty in delivery from time to time.

Project Managers

Like producers, project managers, or PM’s, are responsible for managing projects and ensuring that project deliverables are delivered. They are usually used on larger projects that involve a number of people, not just those within a web team.

Online Marketers

Online marketers’ primary concern should be getting more people to a site. Pay per click (PPC) activity, viral campaigning, partnership agreements and search engine optimisation are all profile raising activities that come under the online marketing function.

Search Engine Optimisers (SEOs)

A specialist online marketing function, search engine optimisers, or SEO’s, do exactly what their title says. They try to improve your natural listings in search engines.

Content Managers

Content managers are concerned with the quality of what you publish and making sure that it is up to date and well managed. They often get involved with writing copy and providing editorial advice to others in the web team.

Copywriters

Copywriters write copy. They can get involved in early design stages, especially of campaigns, and work closely with both marketers and designers to shape the tone of voice of a particular piece of work.

User experience designers/Interaction Designers

User experience designers or interaction designers are similar to web designers, except they often focus more on the interaction elements of a site. Often they will have experience of working on more than just web projects so they may be able to bring a level of knowledge about interaction on a number of other platforms such as mobile, or handheld devices.

Usability specialist

Usability specialists are interested in how users interact with a site, and specifically identifying problem areas. In contrast with many of the other roles here it is the job of a usability to identify the issue to be fix as opposed to attempting to resolve the issues.

Commercial Analysts

Commercial analysts come in many different shapes and sizes, largely determined by the industry that the site competes in. Obviously they are only relevant to those sites that have a financial component. They monitoring what is and isn’t working on the site and the various metrics associated with conversion, basket size and volume.

Web Analysts

Web analyst is a relatively new role, but like the commercial analyst they are concerned with looking at the metrics of a site to try to identify what is and what isn’t working. Expect to hear more about web analysts in the years to come and think about what they could bring to you web team.

Make the most of your web team

The roles described above are really rather loose and most people on a web team will have a combination of several of those skill sets. However don’t expect any one individual to be brilliant at all of them, or even a majority of them.

In terms of how to match your needs with particular skills, there’s no simple answer. It comes down to judgement about where you think you need to focus your web team and what you want to achieve. You also need to keep in mind that each member of your web team is an individual with a unique personality.

Having said that, here is a matrix to help match needs to skill sets. It comes with a very big disclaimer. It’s very general and is provided as food for thought when identifying gaps, not as resourcing guidance. It is not meant to indicate the only skill you need. Hopefully it will help if you are having issues thinking about building you web team’s skill set.

Matrix that indicates the relationships between roles and skills with in a web team highlighting potential areas for growth.

	Design	Dev	IAs	Prod’ers	PMs	Mrktg	SEOs	Cont’t Mngrs	Copy- writers	UX	Us’lity	Com’cial Analysts	Web Anlysts
What is the purpose of your site?
Informational			X					X					X
Transactional		X	X							X		X
Communication		X						X	X	X
What do your users respond to?
Aesthetics	X					X
Entertainment	X					X			X	X
Easy of use			X								X
What area do you want you site to develop in?
More users						X	X
Improved conversion			X						X	X	X	X	X
What problems are you having?
On budget delivery				X	X
On time delivery				X	X
Inefficiency		X		X									X
Quality								X
Maintenance		X						X

Getting the skills mix right and investing in your web team is one of the most effective ways to ensure your site is successful. No matter what technology you use, it’s always the people who decide how to use it that make it a success. Think Ferrari without Michael Schumaker. So if you’re serious about your website, think seriously about who should be part of your web team.

Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 8:22 am | Categories: web teams

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