Get I.T. Out Of Your Marketing

Submitted by Corey Smith on Mon, 06/23/2008 - 11:00

I find it fascinating how often I.T. is assigned to the task of building a website.

For the uninitiated, this may seem like a logical thing to do. After all, a website is technology and requires programming and stuff, right? Wrong. website building

A very small part of a website is programming. A very small part of a website is technology.

Oh, it might take a lot of work. It might be a requirement for the site to function properly, but I.T. should really not have a say in what the customer sees... the face or the marketing aspect of the site.

In my opinion, here are the top five components of a website... in order of importance.

  1. Graphical Presentation - all the pretty pictures. All the pretty buttons. This is the first thing someone sees. This is the first thing that can turn them away.
  2. User interface - This tells people where to go. What do they do next, etc. this may be second to the graphical presentation, but it is a very close second.
  3. Content - Well, you need to content to put on the buttons and graphics, but there is also core site content. People will see pictures and captions of pictures before they ever see this. The may not even read this.
  4. Social aspects - Blogs, forums and support features. If you don't have the core content or pretty graphics, this won't matter. It especially won't matter if people don't know how to get there from the user interface.
  5. Programming - programming comes last. Of course, there may be programming required to accomplish any of the above, it is last for one very important reason. If you don't have the above figured out, programming doesn't matter. If your designer doesn't create graphics, your programmers can't install it. If you don't know what you want the user interface to look like, your programmers can't build it. If you don't have your content written, your programmers can paste it in.

So, get I.T. out of the website design and put marketing on it. Either get it done with an in house marketing team to do it or outsource it. Either way, don't depend on I.T. to build you a great website. Oh, they might be able to pull it off, but those types of I.T. people aren't nearly as common... besides, even if they could, should I.T. really be setting your marketing direction?



Corey Smith is the president of Tribute Media a web development firm providing high performing, industry specific websites. He is a businessman, writer, technology fanatic, graphic designer and web developer. His greatest passion is teaching, consulting and speaking.

You can find him on Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.

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Submitted by Ken Stewart (ChangeForge) (not verified) on Mon, 06/23/2008 - 13:43.
It is often asked to be the bridge between the business units and the customer. The funny thing is that most "IT departments" really aren't cut out for that type of work. I wrote a post on some of my thoughts on that subject, so to save space: http://www.changeforge.com/2008/04/13/is-your-it-a-gatekeeper-or-a-bridge/ Past that, you are absolutely correct. IT should not be at the helm of marketing, a website is simply one facet of the marketing crown. I have functioned as a marketing liason for the past 2 companies I have worked with. To be fair, most feel like they have to have an IT department and can't afford a full time marketing person - so I almost feel like it is a default role IT is often "saddled with". I personally enjoy the graphical and creative side of that business, but I am most certainly not as comfortable in setting vision, and only after I fully comprehend the vision of the company do I even attempt to manage a website in the first place. PS - Gee, I didn't think I rattled your cage that badly the other day ;-)

Submitted by GWalters (not verified) on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 03:05.
Interesting and spot on. And I don't think you've diminished the I.T. position at all. Then again, in a small business, there is usually an "I.T. Person" before there is a Marketing Person - and I bet the Marketing people would rather match pantones then work with the I.T. Department. LOL! By the way, does ANYONE really program anymore? Like with Pascal, PL/1, Fortran, COBOL, LISP or Assembler...?...anyone....anyone at all?

Submitted by Corey Smith (not verified) on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 03:13.
Greg, as a matter of fact, my neighbor programs in Fortran. But even web development requires a fair amount of programming.
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