Website Strategist

Who is a website strategist?

A website strategist is the person responsible for leading the planning, design, development and ongoing growth of a website.

What is the necessary experience for a website strategist?

Business experience

Website strategists must at all times keep in mind two things:

• Business objectives


• Target audience

Being able to create revenue from your website and fulfill your audience’s needs can come only from understanding your company’s business, which is then translated to the web. This is why a great website strategist has to have both business experience and intimate knowledge of the web as a medium. This in turn results in a great website strategy.

If your company’s clients are hiring you as a website strategist, you must understand their business and their target audience. This is certainly the case for digital agencies, but for software engineering companies too (think e-commerce, web apps).

Marketing experience

Is experience in marketing necessary for a web strategist?

Absolutely, definitely – yes.

Why?

Because your company’s website must be at the center of all your digital and traditional marketing efforts.

Done right, your website is the most cost-effective solution for your business, especially when starting out. That’s why it is imperative to have hands-on experience in one of the main digital marketing areas:

• PPC (pay-per-click) marketing


• SEO (search engine optimisation)


• Content marketing


• Social media marketing


• Email marketing


• Mobile marketing

Ideally, detailed knowledge of one area and general in others. Why? Because by using these channels, you will drive traffic to your website. Digital marketing budget management comes into play here.

Social networks, search engines and technologies come and go, but your website stays. It is tied to your brand. If cared for properly, its traffic grows and brings in more revenue. It is also the cheapest way to sell goods and services, compared to traditional marketing and physical stores.

Your website reflects your brand. Ask yourself: What are the messaging and design conveying to the visitor?

Analyst experience

To be able to make sense of what your website’s visitors are doing on your web pages, you should be proficient with web analytics and behaviour tracking tools. Most importantly, to see if they are converting from visitors to leads and buyers. Here are some of the most popular ones:

Web analytics tools:

• Google Analytics


• Matomo

User behaviour tracking tools:

• Hotjar


• Microsoft Clarity

The analytics tools provide quantitative, historical data and metrics, while the behaviour tracking ones offer quality data – real-time insights into your visitors’ behaviour. The insights you gain from the data will enable you to make the best decisions on how to improve your website. This is a never-ending process. It’s called conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Project management

A website strategist leads a web project from start to finish. She is a high-level consultant that works and communicates with various teams and stakeholders, such as:

• Business stakeholders


• Content writers


• UX/UI designers


• Web developers and DevOps


• Marketing


• Sales and Leadgen

Also, you may have to:

• Select new employees who will join your team


• Delegate parts of your work in-house


• Outsource to external organisations


• Mentor your team

A website strategist manages cross-team communication, budgeting, sets timelines, is responsible to their line manager and tracks the return on investment.

Which technical skills are essential for a website strategist?

HTML

HTML is at the heart of the World Wide Web: it defines the structure of each and every web page and its content. Any serious website strategist should be able to look at the source code of a web page and understand it. Groundwork experience is necessary here. CSS and Java

Information architecture

Information architecture defines your website’s content and functionality. It also defines the relationship between the aforementioned two. Do not confuse it with site navigation or user interface. Finally, a sitemap visually represents the organisation of your website’s content.

The strategist understands the information architecture and makes recommendations to improve the user experience.

DNS

The Domain Name System changes domain names (such as www.somewebsite.com) into IP addresses (172.253.117.138, for example) that servers and computers use. Understanding domains and subdomains is important for your business decisions.

For example, you may decide to place your web shop in a subdomain. Or select an entirely new domain, based on rebranding that management decided to do. In that case, redirects of nearly every web page on your domain must point to the corresponding pages on the new domain.

Skipping this may result in a catastrophic loss of traffic. Also, people will google your old brand. They still did it for 2 years after I moved a web portal of mine to a new domain because I rebranded it!

CSS

CSS controls how a website will look. It is separate from HTML – which is a great thing – because companies often change the design of their website every 1.5-2 years. The website’s content stays unchanged, while you can modernise its appearance. And adapt to new devices! Know that it’s essential for responsive web design. As a website strategist, you should at least be acquainted with it, because it impacts user experience.

JavaScript

JavaScript first added interactivity to websites. Today, complex web applications are being built with it and there are many frameworks available. This is why experts in different JavaScript libraries are sought after. You do not need to know how to program in it, but know the possibilities it offers.

Web browsers and responsive web design

Since the Web’s inception, many browsers have dominated the market, just to fall behind once new ones came. The arrival of the first smartphone has changed the way websites are accessed forever.

Understanding the way the same content of a website will be read and interacted with, in so many different ways, across a myriad of devices, is crucial. Never assume how this will happen. Experience it yourself. Your quality assurance expert comes into play here.

User experience

User experience will be the decisive factor in whether your website’s visitors will stay or tap the back button and go elsewhere. The experience springs from how well the user interface of a website has been designed. Things get more complex when a web application or shop is concerned.

You don’t necessarily need the hands-on experience of a UX/UI designer. But a great skill to possess is the ability to put yourself in your user’s shoes. Finally, it is the users themselves who will have the final world. Behaviour tracking tools will clearly show you that.

Knowing your way around a tool like Figma is a plus, so you can quickly create wireframes to discuss with your design team.

Understanding web development

Take an introductory course on a back-end programming language (like PHP or .NET, for example). Grasping the basics of how these technologies operate will take you a long way.

Your goal here is to be able to communicate with web developers. Without a great web developer, you won’t get too far. Understanding how the system works expands your knowledge on what is possible.

Conclusion

A website strategist is a high-level consultant, experienced in areas of business, marketing and technology. This person must also possess excellent communication skills, since the nature of their work overlaps with various other teams and stakeholders.

If you are a website strategist for a client, be aware that the vast majority of them do not understand many of the concepts and technologies with which you are working on a daily basis.

Need a seasoned website strategist? Contact us now to discuss your web project: