[Sigia-l] re: Time for communications to take charge of your website

[Patrick Hunt]

Gray is my favorite color.   ;-)    (sorry in advance for the length)

Just as there are organizations for which a site's owner should live in
communications (public image, messaging strategy, investor relations, etc.),
there are others for which the site owner should live in marketing (sales,
sales and more sales). Still others may be most appropriately placed in
customer service (which may already be in marketing) or IT (particularly if
led by a CIO).

For most websites that cut across departments and user groups (most of them
do), the buck stops with the senior ranking manager who manages all the
affected departments, often an officer responsible for day-to-day
operations, whether the President, CEO or COO. This person may delegate
responsibility to one or more people, but the "matrixed" departments--often
IT and HR, sometimes Communications, and other groups--must all contribute
and support the website, and the senior owner must continually reinforce the
structure and approach.

This is why planning is so critical. If the management team signs off on a
strategic plan for the organization, and the website owner collaborates with
others to develop a site strategy that very directly supports the
organizational strategy, decision-making is easier and in-fighting can be
minimized. Planning is even more important today, as management and employee
turnover can cause upheaval that completely diminishes the progress that
came before the changes. In fact, it may be better in some instances to give
ownership of the site to a specific person, regardless of where they live in
the organizational hierarchy and structure; if this person has the right
skills to make it happen.

Organizations with CIOs are (usually) fortunate to have a senior ranking
officer who ostensibly has the business, strategy, marketing and technical
skills to be the uuber owner of a site; likewise a senior ranking user
experience professional.

Whomever owns the site, the person must be capable of balancing the needs of
the various departments, balancing the needs of the organization with the
needs of the user, and balancing brand with usability. The owner must be
capable of satisfying his or customers, whether internal or external.
Managing this balancing act while still delivering a compelling, useful and
effective website is a tremendous challenge.

As an experience architect with a diverse background in strategy, PR,
marketing, branding, design (graphic and web) and IT, I find that I am often
in a position to bridge the gap between the competing interests of users and
departments. Often, my focus is on "bringing it all together," which
requires some original thought and critical analysis, but also the ability
to build consensus and understand the trade-offs inherent in a world with
limited resources. 

Lets work to end the land grab and instead pursue the development of
guidelines by which organizations can make such decisions. The process
begins with some basic, but often difficult questions:

What is the organization's purpose?
Who are its customers?
What is the website strategy?
Who are the site's users?
What are the skill sets required to direct the website (strategy,
technology, design, communications, etc.)?
Which departments in the organization are tasked with building and
maintaining these competencies for the organization? Do they have a common
senior executive?
Who in the organization, regardless of department, has the skills required?
Does the existing matrix and collaborative environment allow effective
management of the site, or is a separate, sub-matrix (?) required?
How can we push input and decision-making to those closest to customers?

A critical analysis of the answers to these questions should help an
organization define the ideal structural approach to meet their specific
needs, while highlighting their deficiencies and opportunities. The ultimate
result should be a website management plan that works for this particular
organization, and may have little resemblance to any other.

Whew!

Regards,

Patrick


> From: Karyn Zuidinga <kayzee at shaw.ca>
> Reply-To: Karyn Zuidinga <kayzee at shaw.ca>
> Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 09:38:23 -0700
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] re: Time for communications to take charge of your website
> 
> After lurking on this list for a while, the discussion around departmental
> ownership of the web site has drawn me out. For the last two years I have
> been working on (and finally finished!) my Master's thesis. In it I examined
> information architecture as an editorial process; specifically comparing the
> role and activities of a managing editor of a magazine to that of the
> information architect. As has been mentioned here, there are several
> similarities in outlook and goals between the IA and the managing editor. It
> has also been pointed out that on sites where the primary objective is to
> sell something (e.g. Amazon) the similarities break down.
> 
> To me it seems like there are three areas of expertise in IA: structural
> (site maps, content grouping, logical structure); functional (thesauri, meta
> data, logistics, interoperability); and interaction (design, user
> interface). I suspect we'll see specialization in IA, especially in larger
> shops, much as we have seen in publishing where a large magazine may have a
> managing editor, line editors, copy editors, and so on. In smaller shops,
> like small magazines where there's one managing editor who does it all from
> soup to nuts, we'll see one IA who covers the gamut.
> 
> Karyn Zuidinga, MPub
> 
> 
> 
> Content Management Symposium, Chicago O'Hare Marriott, June 28 - 30.
> See http://www.asis.org/CM
> 
> ASIST SIG IA: http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIA/index.html
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