Posted on 13 February 2008 by Jack No Comments

Web governance – who holds the reins?

When it comes to your organisation’s website(s), who makes the rules?

Web governance – which encompasses the structure of people, positions, policies and rules around a website – is a hot issue for today’s business. We regularly get queries about how Australian companies can best develop strategies for managing and maintaining their websites.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

Where the responsibility lies (for example, in marketing, corporate communications, IT or a separate business line) will depend on a number of factors:

• Type and size of business
• Purpose of the website
• Technical complexity of services provided

No matter where the web team sits, it needs the full support of top-tier management and close integration with both marketing and IT departments.

Get buy-in from the top, and establish a chain of command. More importantly, test this chain for weakness in escalation events. Who’s responsible for pulling a page off a site if one of your products suddenly goes off-line? Who is in charge of keeping your home page content fresh? Who has to sign off on new content, and how long will this process take?

‘Hub and spokes’ approach

Eric T. Peterson speaks of a hub and spokes approach to structuring web analytics governance. I think the same should apply for web governance.

If your web team is the hub, other key organisational departments are the spokes that should communicate and cooperate with the web team.

For example, departments that are responsible for acquiring and retaining customers and channel partners should provide the web team with quick responses and a dedicated resource.

As business websites become more functional, IT plays an ever-increasing role in enabling complex services and supporting the operating platform. In these instances, it makes more sense for the web team ‘hub’ to sit within or next to the IT department. The ‘spokes’ to marketing, operations and other business units can still feed off from here.

Set the wheel in motion

You’ve got your wheel – hub, spokes and all – and now it’s time to set it in motion.

To do so, you need to set some standards (or policies or rules). This may be achieved via a steering committee with representatives from all relevant departments, or more effectively via one ‘boss’. Again, it depends on the size and structure of your business.

Once the rules are established, disseminate them to relevant parties and include information about how you’re going to enforce the rules, with clear avenues for raising issues or problems.

And don’t forget to re-evaluate your rules on a regular basis – as the organisation grows and evolves, the objectives of the website will change too.

If you can’t identify who holds the reins of your website, it’s time to think about web governance. Once you’ve got the right model in place, your website will really start to perform.

• Learn more about Bienalto’s web consulting services
• Read about Web Analytics Governance on Hurol Inan’s dedicated site on Web Analytics