“Who is in charge of your website?”

Actually this is a misleading question. The answer to the question above is probably “[place name here] in the Information Technology department.” That’s the person who makes requested changes and who fixes the website when it crashes.

My question should actually have been phrased “Who is in charge of your website strategy/content?” And I’m guessing that your answer at this particular point is probably “I’m not sure.”

Most websites have tended to grow somewhat organically, with Sales putting some brochure ware on line, Human Resources adding a few job postings, Customer Service reluctantly agreeing to a place for customers to submit emails, and … you get the idea. Information tends to be added once, and then forgotten, with no one given the responsibility for keeping content up-to-date and little (if any) thought given to maximizing the website’s potential or measuring how well the website is supporting the company’s goals.

Assigning the responsibility to one department isn’t a good idea. Whoever you give the website responsibility to, everyone else in the company can say “Oh, that’s XXXX’s responsibility” and forget about it. Dividing the ownership is not much better—your website is likely to become a co-located group of single-function “silos.”

The solution developed by more effective companies is a Web Steering Committee—generally 6-8 fairly senior managers under the leadership of an executive officer, meeting at least quarterly to ensure that the company gets the maximum possible utility out of this extremely important client-facing communication channel.

Typical Web Steering Committees have a mid-level Website Leader to centralize administration, plus representatives from:
Executive Level (strategy)
Sales (prospecting & direct sales)
Marketing (branding & public relations)
Customer Service (customer interfacing)
Information Technology (technical issues)
Finance (budgeting & performance analysis)

Two key ways the Web Steering Committee can help maximize the utility of the website are by prioritizing website improvement projects (by the monetized benefits they’ll produce?) and designating and monitoring performance metrics. (This is in addition to the natural benefits of raising the website’s profile and keeping its content current.)

If you’d like some outside help making your website a more useful tool, I’ll be happy to talk with you!