5 roles that go into creating a successful website

Recently I published what you should know before starting your website because more steps go into making a successful one than some might think.

Once you understand the ideal process for putting together all a website entails, you can resolve what phases or deliverables you feel comfortable managing and producing yourself versus what you want to outsource for.

I’ll outline the typical roles involved in each stage of a website project and what responsibilities these have. With this information, you can start your search for your ideal website consultant!

Creating a successful website

When most people think about having a website made they consider the look and feel, and the functionality it retains. Often, the content itself is overlooked or treated as a secondary step by which we can simply copy and paste text into placeholders and call it a day.

The truth is, you can do that. You can find a template that you like the look of, install its demo content, and simply replace the text with your own. It might even work for you! 

But, if you’re actively trying to grow your reach, generate leads, or sell products and services via your website, throwing random efforts at the screen won’t stick for long.

It’s why agencies exist, or freelancers often specialize. Individuals can excel at a variety of roles, and work together to plan, write, design and develop full scope websites.

From ideation to launch, these are just an example of some professional roles that advise on successful website projects:

1. Graphic Designers
2. Content Strategists
3. Web Designers
4. Web Developers
5. Web Managers

Graphic Designers

Graphic design can cover a large scope of work, including logo design and branding strategy.

I suggest that this is where individuals start, if you don’t already have an existing brand guide to deliver to your web designer when starting your project.

Graphic designers who specialize in brand strategy and logo design are equipped with the experience and tools to design professional graphics and documentation that support you with many decisions you’ll need to make along the way.

For example, a brand strategy can include the following:

• Market analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Customer research
• Brand positioning and voice
• Messaging and content pillars

Effectively, through this process you learn what is important to you and your business, and how to align your marketing efforts with these goals.

In addition to the strategy and research behind your brand, is the identity design.

Graphic designers take your brand strategy and implement the graphical elements your business needs, including its logo and a detailed style guide.

A brand design can include:

• Primary logo and accompanying versions
• Word or brandmarks
• Typography/font selection
• Colour palette
• Custom graphics

This is an important step for a business because in all of your future efforts, you will rely on some variable from these strategies constantly, such as these 5 common branding tasks:

1. Copies of your vector logo in all appropriate formats, in both web and print resolutions, for your own use and sharing out as needed, 
2. Ensuring your brand colours pass contrast accessibility tests, 
3. Streamlining your social media update process with template graphics,
4. Strategic information to fallback on when making decisions about your messaging, or advertising.
5. Managing to keep your brand, voice, and messaging consistent across all mediums or media.

Think twice before you skip the branding design phase of your business. The process and questions you field in this phase alone could provide you with advantageous ideas that offer continued support throughout the duration of running your business.

Content Strategists

Content strategy defines your business goals and the needs of your audience, creating aligned copy or other media, and developing the plan to administer this content online.

Once you have your logo and brand process finalized, you can share this information with a Content Specialist who will work with you to develop your brand messaging and media further.

This particular role can have many names, and may have additional roles broken down into siloed networks. Some general positions may be known as:

• Content Writers
• Copywriters
• Content Strategists
• Digital Marketers
• Content Managers

And in other mediums or media, may be known as:

• SEO Specialists
• Videographers
• Video Production
• Email Marketers
• Social Media Managers

Fundamentally, all of these roles are responsible for determining what type of content your website and other online profiles publish, and producing the content itself.

Remember what I said earlier about random efforts not sticking for long? If you simply replace demo text with your own, on the fly, without much thought or strategy this typically lands you in that zone where you feel like you have a decent website but don’t understand why it’s not performing well.

Unless your site has some major technical issues, it’s usually your content.

Similar to your brand strategy, (and by working in tandem with it), Content Strategists also provide research and analysis before jumping into content creation themselves or sub-contracting a copywriter.

Before writing words even begins, competition and keyword analysis is completed so that copywriters not only know more about the focus topics and phrases they’re writing about but how to apply it in a way that speaks to your audience, while still keeping search engines in mind.

Even those with experience writing often find it difficult to write website content. But don’t let that stop you!

It can be helpful to produce a draft of your website content, as you see it, so that your strategist or copywriter can get a better idea of where you’re coming from. They, or a copyeditor, can then review your efforts and edit or pull accordingly.

Web Designers

Web Design encompasses the overall look and feel of your website.

A web designer will first communicate with you about user experience, your content, and brand, to get a feel for what you like and need out of a website. This is why it’s important to have your branding and content ready before the design phase begins.

Why having branding and content finalized first can help with web design

Designing without branding

If a web designer isn’t given brand assets to work with or draw inspiration from, your web design will be done with more guesswork than intentional decision-making.

This could cause issues in the future if you choose to build out a branding strategy and then require the website be updated to conform to your new brand standards. 

While colours and fonts can be swapped out easily, the overall look and feel can change even with slight adjustments to styling or imagery.

Alternatively, you may be happy with what your web designer comes up with and choose to utilize the same colours, fonts, and elements to build your brand around. Yet, you’ll still need a professional logo and possible trademark.

If the placeholders or elements used on your website were sourced from stock or not selected with accessibility and user experience in mind, you’ll need to alter them to some degree.

Designing without content

If a web designer isn’t given copy or imagery to work with, your web design will be done with placeholder content such as stock photos or “dummy text”.

Dummy text may appear in Latin, as this was a commonly used placeholder to account for both short and long words and varied paragraph lengths. 

This can cause confusion or throw off a design in the review process though. It’s best to be able to see the actual text you’ll have on the website in your design so that you can get as accurate a representation as possible.

Even if a web designer uses more common language to write placeholder text it may not carry the same effect as your final copy. 

Paragraphs and content areas in a web design mock-up may be longer and coincide with the layout and formatting of text better than when the final copy is supplied and it turns out it is much shorter in length, causing the overall design to look less intentional.

Web Developers

The process of coding and building the framework, pages, and technical functionality of your website is called Web Development.

While many freelancers offer the full scope of website services, there are just as many who choose to specialize in design or programming, honing their skills even further. You will need to supply final design comps to your web developer so that they know how to code and build your website, ensuring it looks and behaves how it’s intended to.

This phase is inherently conducive to understanding why the website process has an order of things. Your web development phase will be 100% more efficient if you already know:

a) what the website will look like, 

b) how the website will function, and 

c) what content you’re populating into it.

Another benefit arises during the website review process. In my experience, when clients view their staging sites with their photos and text included, our time to launch decreases exponentially. There are fewer changes, and fewer questions.

Because by the time you’re physically putting together your website, you have already completed:

• Research
• Branding
• Strategy
• Copywriting
• Design
• Optimization

Which means you don’t have to worry about any of these pieces and can focus entirely on your website development, including further optimization, accessibility, and responsive testing.

If you are DIY-ing your website yourself and start building your pages without any idea of what they’re going to look like, what your headlines versus paragraphs are, or how many characters of text is meant to fit in a particular element, this is where the lack of process can start feeling frustrating.

Not only are you trying to learn how to make a website for the first time, but worrying about more than one phase of the process at once, leaves you less likely to retain any of the information you’re trying to learn or implement.

Tasks or steps of your website build may get rushed, or missed altogether. 

If you’re not familiar with WordPress, or other content management systems (CMS), HTML, CSS, or all of the best practices and processes that go into launching an optimized and accessible website, you’ll be left wondering why your website isn’t performing as well as you thought it would. 

Web Managers

Website management includes the monitoring, maintaining, and administration of the server, website, and third-party integrations.

Surprise! You’re not done when you launch your website. Still, congratulations for getting there! But now you have some ongoing work to do…

Once a website is published online, at the very least, you need to monitor and maintain it. (For those who are actively tracking lead generation and advertising, you will also want to review your analytical data, which is where SEO Specialists are likely providing a service.)

So, you’ll need to gauge whether you’re ready to manage your website yourself or, you guessed it, hire a website manager.

Some of the tasks that might fall to a web manager are:

• Updates to server PHP version
• Updates to WordPress version
• Updates to parent and child theme versions
• Updates to installed plugin versions
• Compatibility testing of all updates
• Working on a staging server vs live site, using back-ups
• Content updates and front-end changes
• Acting as Technical Contact for hosting provider and third-party integration
• Troubleshooting and remediating issues on website
• Renewing subscriptions, API keys, or connected applications

Even if you choose not to self-host a website and use a proprietary platform that hosts your website for you, you’ll still need to ensure you’re reviewing their terms, settings, that your webpages are working responsively in all browsers and devices, your site is accessible, and connect your tracking scripts.

I can’t stress enough how much you should never ‘set and forget’ your website if you have any use for it at all. From security issues to functionality deployment, to being non-indexed by search engines, or hacked with harmful malware that executes when visitors come to your site… these can all do drastic harm to your brand and business efforts.

5 roles that go into creating a successful website

1. Graphic Designers
2. Content Strategists
3. Web Designers
4. Web Developers
5. Web Managers

A common misconception people have is that by working with someone who carries one of these titles, they’re automatically receiving services that fall under any number of the others. 

I believe this happens due to not knowing the full process that goes into launching a new website, so now that I’ve explained the 5 roles that go into creating a successful website, what do you do with this information?

Ask yourself these 3 questions.

You already know my advice on where to start, but that will be different for everyone depending on what assets or phases you may have already completed, or what skillsets and experience you have.

Make a list.

I’m a list maker so I would write down all of the things I have versus all of the things I don’t. Then, under the outstanding items, I would start differentiating between what tasks I felt that I could take on myself versus what I know I will need support with.

If you only have a phase or two that you require support for, you may want to work with an individual or agency that specializes in the service offerings you need.

Complement your DIY efforts.

If you’re like many of the clients I work with on a continual basis, you might be finding yourself in need of some all around support. That’s where working with a freelancer like me can bring added value to not only your website but your business too!

I’ve been making websites since I was 12-years-old, and doing it professionally for over 20 years! In this time I’ve learned a lot about project management, strategy, and optimization in addition to my original design and development services.

Many other freelancers offer full scope website services, it’s just a matter of finding someone who resonates with you that you have a good feel for working with! 

Take advantage of our offers for free consultations and use introduction calls to help you discover any tasks or considerations you might have missed.