Here you are, with your brand new website, freshly delivered by your web agency. What do you do now to make sure it does not turn Rainforest like within two weeks?
Know the website objectives
A website is a tool, not an objective. It can help you to do a lot of things like selling, getting new customers, improve loyalty of existing ones, revamp your brand image, etc. If you want a chance to succeed, you’d better know what you’re looking for. Objectives may have been defined by your management, or you may have to find out yourself. If the latter is correct, start with a short list of priorities. You will have time later to expand it, once the primary goal is reached.
Identify content owners
Website Managers are not supposed to be accountable for all their website content, particularly if it deals with specialised topics or legal issues. Anyway if the site is large you won’t be able to mind it all on your own. That’s why you need to clearly identify a content owner for each page of the website. I mean it: write down the list of sections, making sure it covers all the website pages, and match each one with a unique name, the one of the person who is responsible for updating or providing you with content. Of course, the Web Administrator can own some sections, especially the ones directly related to the site such as “Help” or “Contact”.
Meet the team
Times are gone when Webmasters were managing websites from top to toe on their own. They’re now conductors rather than handymen (though a well equipped tool box still comes in handy). You have to make sure you know who does what and you’d better have a nice and trusty relationship with them. This opportunity to get to work with a wide range of professionals is one of the nice aspects of Website Management.
Plan
Managing a website involves a lot of checking quality, as well as pages updates, promotion and reporting. To be as effective and painless as possible, these operations can be planned pro-actively. Pages that are most likely to change often and relate to website core business should be checked first. Tools to audit the quality of a website should also be run at least once a month. And users feedback should be sought once in a while.
The above four steps are only good sense applied to website management. But it is important to remember that the job needs to be done as professionally as any other one.