Who in Your Organization Should Be Involved in Your Next Website Redesign?

Kyle James — June 5, 2017

Redesigning a corporate website has become an item that most businesses feel is a necessary evil every few years. It sucks months away from the marketing team and by the time it’s finally launched it’s not uncommon for internal stakeholders to already be tired of looking at it.

There are a large number of different internal stakeholders who should be involved in a website redesign process, some more involved than others. At the end of the day, your website is one of the most visible parts of your company to outside audiences and because of this it is an incredibly important part of your business. Let’s talk about the most important individuals who should be involved in a website redesign and how.

Web Developer

This is a rather generalized term in 2017. Is this person the designer and developer, or a developer who is customizing a template to match your brand? Is the developer part of your company or someone you have hired specifically for this project? Maybe it’s even an agency. No matter what, this is the person who is actually putting in the blood, sweat and tears to bring the idea into reality. This person is the subject matter expert. They will work with you to make the rest of the team’s dreams come true here.

Marketers

The marketing team is usually the individuals driving the website redesign. Marketers have identified the personas and verticals that are being targeted. Marketers are also typically the owners of the content creation strategy of the website (blog/whitepapers/ebooks/webinars/etc.) and branding/messaging strategy. What is a big mistake is to assume that marketers are the ONLY people who should have any say in your new website. It should be part of their role to solicit feedback and advice from the rest of the departments on this list.

Sales

What are the questions that come up all the time in sales conversations? What are the pain points of prospective customers that lead them to talk to your company for help? Salespeople are going to know the answers to these questions better than anyone. They will also know how these needs of customers change over time. Salespeople are great to get more validation on your personas and make sure that you are appropriately targeting all the correct verticals/industries on your website. Needless to say, salespeople spend all day every day talking to prospects and clients and because the goal of the website is to help your company sell more products or services, you definitely want to make sure that the redesign efforts are aligned with your sales team. It might not be as necessary to solicit sales feedback on the design but the content is crucial to get their feedback on.

Management/Leadership

Usually leadership is given the authority of final sign-off or approval on things like a website redesign. Because of this single reason it’s kind of unavoidable that leadership will be involved in a website redesign project. Some leadership teams will also be much more hands-on and involved in this process than others. It’s obvious how the hands-on teams will be involved but it’s not so obvious how others will and I think it makes sense to discuss that quickly.

Leadership teams own the mission, values and core culture of the company. All of these things are important to consider in a website redesign. If you have a leadership team who isn’t deeply involved, you want to present the direction and why the new redesign will successfully meet these criteria. A successful person leading a website project will present the vision to leadership looking for approval of their direction and not permission.

Any Other Individuals Who Talk to Prospects/Customers

Basically anyone who talks to prospects or customers is full of invaluable information that could be on your website. Specifically we are thinking about support, account manager and customer service staff. Remember your website is your storefront that is open 24/7/365 and the people who talk to customers are experts on the customer experience. Similar to the sales team, you want this feedback to focus more on the content and messaging side than the design and branding.

Takeaway

With all these different internal stakeholders the most important challenge to avoid is death by committee. There should still be a single person who is driving this project and makes the final decision in what is and isn’t included. Although it’s important for a business website to serve many audiences, it will fail in effectiveness if it tries to serve all the audiences with equal importance. Identify that primary audience or persona early and make final decisions with this focus in mind.

Remember, getting an opinion from multiple parts of your company should be a useful and valuable insight into the final product and not something that harms and stalls the release. As a final takeaway remember that all website visitors have a few things in common.

• They scan and don’t read online; their time is valuable.
  
• They don’t like cluttered websites.
  
• Organization and relevance matter.
  
• Finally, they don’t care what you do; they care about THEIR problem and whether you can fix it.

Good luck in your next redesign!

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