Basic Guide to Building a Website Team

For Website Creation or Redevelopment, Call a Website Marketer First

If you run a small, internal marketing team or handle all in-house marketing responsibilities by yourself, chances are you’ll need some outside assistance to create a new website or redevelop an existing one. Depending on your marketing background, you are likely to call an agency or a freelancer and tell them you need website design or website development. In fact, you may think these two are one in the same.

In actuality, website designers and developers have two completely different skill sets, and their expertise usually does not intersect with the one specialist who should help lead your website development project: the website marketer.

Because people use the terms website designer, website developer, and website marketer interchangeably, Data Dames has developed an analogy to help our clients differentiate these three distinct areas of specialization. We devoted an entire podcast to this topic, which you can listen to here.

The analogy also serves as a basic guide you can use to build a website team to cover most if not all phases of your next website project.

What Architects, Interior Designers & Construction Companies Have to Do With Websites

The most successful website projects combine the talents of, metaphorically speaking, an architect, an interior designer, and a construction company. Here’s a quick breakdown of our analogy:

The Architect = The Website Marketer

The reason we we call a website marketer the architect is because they will help you pinpoint your site’s purpose, structure, and function and then develop the optimal blueprint, or transition strategy, for the site right from the beginning. This blueprint is based on the following key aspects of marketing:

1. Your business objectives and goals.
2. If applicable, your current site’s page performance metrics, visitor flow, keyword mapping, etc.
3. Brand messaging and, if applicable, a current content audit.
4. Technical SEO, UX, and conversion optimization.

The Interior Designer = The Website Designer

With a website blueprint / transition strategy in hand, you can begin imagining how your new or revised website will look. A website marketer and website designer will work hand in hand to help you find the right balance between branding and marketing initiatives.

Many companies start with website design and get fixated on colors, fonts, image placement, etc. Although these aspects are extremely important, they can be done in vacuum. A website marketer can help the team stay focused on objectives and goals, data-informed insights, and what customers (and search engines) need as part of the buyer journey.

The Construction Company = The Website Developer

Once the website structure and design are established, construction can begin. Having the transition strategy and design completed first makes the website developer’s job much easier because they are free to focus on coding and design implementation. During the construction process, the architect / website marketer can help oversee testing, launch, and post-launch to ensure the site is performing up to expectations for visitors and search engines.

Good News: Websites Are Never Finished

Unlike a building, websites are never truly finished. (Of course, an architect will probably argue buildings are never truly finished, either.) That’s actually good news because, at any time, you can engage a website marketer to help you improve your website’s performance as it relates to your business objectives and goals.