Time for communications to take charge of your website: May 20, 2002 issue of New Thinking

May 20, 2002 New Thinking:
Time for communications to take charge of your website

Website content management

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May 20, 2002

Time for communications to take charge of your website

By Gerry McGovern

The natural home for your website is within the communications section of your organization. This is because the Web is first and foremost a communications medium. To fully own the website, communications managers need to stop being scared of technology. They also need to get to grips with information architecture design.

The first websites nearly always originated within the IT department. Generally, it was an evangelist who drove the Web forward with little support from management. As the website grew in importance, marketing got involved, often with disastrous results.

Too many marketing executives totally misunderstand the Web. Sorry, folks, you're not running a TV ad campaign here. You may dream of broadband but people who use the Web on a daily basis just want to get information quickly.

The communications manager should love the challenge of delivering information quickly. Internally, they should embrace the intranet as a wonderful means of communicating with staff. Externally, they should embrace the website as a wonderful means of communicating with customers, investors, journalists, and the public at large.

Many communications executives have not established greater ownership of the Web because of a fear of technology and a lack of understanding of what the Web is really for.

The fear of technology is often fed by the IT department who don't like to let go of their website 'baby.' Conversations are littered with techie mumbo jumbo, and putting a simple piece of text on the website is made into a horribly complicated task.

It's time for web publishing technology to become transparent. There's now more than enough reasonably-priced content management software out there to make publishing content a relatively easy task. Today, if publishing content on your website is an overly technical task, the IT department is not doing its job properly.

Another reason why communication executives have not embraced the website is because they have shied away from information architecture design. Again, the impression is that information architecture is a technical discipline.

It is absolutely not. It is a communications discipline. Those who try to make it seem technical don't understand it properly or are trying to protect their turf.

Information architecture deals with the organization and layout of content on a website. If a communications executive has ever managed the publication of a magazine, large report, or book, they have dealt with information architecture-type issues. Figuring out how to lay out the front page of a magazine, the table of contents, the index, the chapter structure; these are all information architecture-type issues.

Yes, information architecture is quite complicated on a large website. However, metadata, classification, navigation, search, and webpage design and layout, are communications challenges.

Again, techie mumbo jumbo can shroud basic realities. (Just what the hell is 'content reengineering?') However, at the end of the day, the organization and layout of content is a communications issue.

The person in charge of your website should be a communications expert with strong expertise in editing and publishing content. They should have control of the entire website, not just parts of it.

Certainly, they can delegate responsibility and get support from IT and marketing, where appropriate. However, if you want a website that is professional and cohesive, and that achieves its core objective, put a communications expert in charge.

A website's core objective is? To communicate.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: The skills you need to manage your website
Previous issue: Why someone should be in charge of your website
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"The term "bible" is now highly over-used in reference to tech books – but if it weren't, that's how I would categorize Content Critical."
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"Content Critical is the best non-technical book on the subject of web content that I have come across to date … For those interested in the ‘change management’ dimension of content and knowledge management, Content Critical may well become the standard text."
Andy Harrison, Content Management Focus magazine

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The person in charge of your website should be a communications expert with strong expertise in editing and publishing content.

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