MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

This is the second in a series that examines the various roles which might be present on your company’s Web team and how those roles affect the implementation and success of your marketing campaigns. Today’s installment addresses the Web developer.

In my last article, I gave an overview of the Web designer role. Today I am looking at the yin to the Web designer’s yang – the Web developer. Often, the casual observer will have the most difficultly drawing a clear distinction in a corporate Web team between the Web designer and the Web developer. They are both conversant in Internet jargon. They can both have direct access to Web pages and ancillary systems that affect the website. To confuse matters more so, in some organizations, they are the same person.

So if the Web designer is primarily responsible for the overall design of pages and graphics, what exactly does the Web developer develop on the site? In short, Web developers develop applications. An application uses business logic to manipulate data or customize the visitor’s experience. To put it in simpler terms, “developer” usually refers to a programmer – someone who enjoys building complex rules to drive and maintain systems. Read more…

When I view the Internet marketing landscape through the lens of an IT professional, I routinely come back to a fundamental conflict – most companies have at least two teams which are responsible for the performance of the website.

One team – the IT team – is responsible for the functional performance of the site. The other team – the marketing team – is responsible for the business performance of the site. Unfortunately, the performance of these two objectives are frequently misaligned.

Marketing professionals face distinct challenges to launch and maintain Web-based initiatives. They must constantly quantify business returns through the website, yet they frequently do not have the tactical (technical) tools at their disposal to make this happen.

This means that they must routinely coordinate their initiatives through the IT team. Aside from the traditional hurdles of culture and jargon, marketers can also be stymied by an expanding and splintering list of roles that may be present in any company’s “Web team.”

I have often seen marketers spin their wheels because they direct their requests to members of the Web team who are either ill-equipped or, in some cases, forbidden to fulfill the marketer’s request. Like a shopper who asks a butcher for a loaf of bread, the marketing team too often finds itself directing its requests to any member of IT who will listen – and then becoming frustrated when those requests are ignored or the final product fails to live up to the marketing vision.

For this reason, I believe it may save some headaches if we spend some time simply defining the typical roles in corporate Web teams. More importantly, you should know that every role on the IT team represents certain skills that could drive the success of your marketing campaign – or sabotage it before it ever gets off the ground.

So over the summer, I’m going to blog about these roles to help you get the most value from your IT resources. In this first installment, I’m going to address one of the most generic and misunderstood roles on a Web team – the Web designer. Read more…