Website Challenges - Websites are Hard!

It's easy to think that once a website is live, the hard part is over. That's a mistake.

Too often, especially in larger companies, websites are built without thinking about the future. Someone who doesn't understand how the web works approves the site, and it launches. Now there's a website, but it might not be what anyone really wants. Or, they see competitors making changes and want their site to keep up.

But one of the most common website challenges is that sites were not designed to change and grow.

Now everyone is in a panic! Companies spend extra money to fix the site quickly. Marketing teams are stressed because they have to make changes, but the site wasn't built to be flexible. An agency is found and is well-meaning, but they miss key deliverables that were not communicated clearly because things were so rushed.

While discussing the challenges of great websites, remember this: Websites need constant care.

New articles and videos need to be created. Software needs to be updated to keep the site secure and working fast. And as your audience changes, the website has to change with them.

Think of it this way: A website is not an event, it is a conversation that goes on as long as you have an audience. Launching the site is just the beginning. The real work is keeping the conversation healthy and strong.

Great content takes great effort

Your website is a work in progress. It needs attention every day to stay successful. The web team will be busy updating content, responding to changes in the market, and learning more about what your audience wants today *and* tomorrow.

The content team keeps people coming back with fresh articles, videos and infographics that show you are a reliable and trustworthy organization. But, creating this content takes effort, time, and money. Not only does the content need to be excellent, but it also needs to be shared or promoted in the right places so your audience can find you.

Even the largest companies struggle with this work and keeping focused on the work that brings success.

Not everybody is good at creating content

One thing I learned working with talented content marketing teams is that I'm not one of them! I'm not an amazing writer, and I don't have a natural talent for website design.

I can do these things, but they're not my strong suit.

It's easy to underestimate how much work goes into a successful website. To be effective, your content needs to be clear, connect with your audience, and be updated frequently.

Need proof? Take a look at how many company blogs start strong but then fade away after a short time. Many people expect instant results and think of building a website a single event, rather than a continuous process.

I'm not a content marketing expert, but I know the technical side of things.

Measuring success is a pain

Google Analytics might make it seem simple, but figuring out how well your website is doing is actually quite hard.

Sometimes it's easy to see if people are buying your product. But often, customers take a long time to make up their minds. They go through several steps before they choose to do business with you.

So, instead of just one big success measurement, you need to track a bunch of smaller ones. Did people sign up for your email list? How many pages did they view? Did more people find you through social media?

This means your website's success isn't one straight line. It's more like a chess game where you try different strategies to reach your audience. You also have to deal with challenges like competitors, privacy rules, technical problems, and the constantly changing world of social media.

Summary: Why is creating content difficult?

Weren't you listening? Let me break it down:

A great website needs people with different skills, but there should be one person in charge.

Too often, a site is managed by a "website committee" or "center of excellence" or similar bureaucratic group. This is more often true in large companies. This managing group may have meetings every few months to go over goals and but often sends "urgent" requests to change things on the website at any time.

This committee approach leads to several important problems:

Who sets the priorities?

Each committee member has their own to-do list for the website. These lists get very long and often contain multiple "top priority" items.

So, who decides what gets done first? The committee might set a list, but the team doing the work may not have been consulted. Website project management is often formally in place, but organizes work at the whim of the website committee. This means the top task could take months, while several smaller ones could be done much faster.

On top of that, new "urgent" requests come in all the time, and the committee usually approves them to be immediately addressed without asking for the impact on the other in-progress work.

This means the team working on the website ends up deciding what's actually a priority. The committee thinks they're in charge, but they've given up control without realizing it. The team finds ways to "make things work" which may or may not be the best result and answer for the organization.

The worst part? The website team is blamed when things don't go according to plan! The team is probably already overworked and rushing, then they're told it's not good enough.

The web team is simultaneously asked "why did the urgent request take so long?" AND "why didn't you finish all the work we talked about in our last committee meeting?"

This happens because the list of priorities they were given wasn't clear, kept getting changed, or maybe even had conflicting goals. It happens because the committee interrupts the promised work schedule to change things. It happens because there's no clear owner and the committee will fight against having one owner.

Flip side: What does success look like?

Committees like to think they make clear decisions, but that's not always (rarely?) true.

Because everyone gets a say, website goals tend to get broad and vague. Instead of a sharp focus, you can't judge if the site is working well.

Most committees rely on simple numbers like page views or sales. That's good to know, but it doesn't help you improve the site!

You need to understand how visitors use the site from start to finish and track what actions they take along the way. But if the goal keeps changing – fix one thing this month, change another part next month – you don't have time to learn how to _really_ make things better. You fix what the committee asks for, but don't look at the bigger picture.

One Possible Solution:

Most big organizations don't have a single person responsible for their website. To improve the site, it needs to be treated like a product with a clear owner.

That owner would still work with others who contribute to the site, such as representatives who would have been on a committee. The site owner sets priorities, helps the web team stay focused, and finds the best ways to measure website success.

Organizations often skip research as they try to do too much at one time. Given that organizations have a limited pool of money to spend on the website, competing priorities dissuade from investing in audience research.

Research costs money, and everybody prefers to assume they "know their audience" and spend the money on content and code...expecting that it will "work" for the "audience" the "know". The fallacy here is that getting more features or content on a site is not the same as delivering what audiences want most.

The same goes for other practices that create great sites, but don't advance a committee-based management style. There is often a nod towards a "brand" style guide, but there are no design systems. Focus groups sometimes get funded to help solve a specific problem, but rarely is there an investment in the end-to-end customer journey. And so on.

There are plenty of visible side-effects:

And with all this, it goes without saying that things like SEO are going to suffer because these require a coherent, unified approach to be successful. If a unit is letting their content go stale or is adding a million tiny press-release style posts every day, SEO results will be ugly.

The only solution is to do research and test why audiences are coming to the site. Don't create a huge section on some focus area is nobody coming to the site is interested. (Like, I don't have ANY idea why so many sites still have executive profiles. The only people likely to be interested in them are the executives themselves). Get a solid handle on what the audience needs and DO THAT.

"I've used WordPress. This should be easy."

Sadly, no.

Websites are not Microsoft Word. Off-the shelf web hosting offers limited feature choices and customization options.

Custom websites that stand out are a whole different story. The same website can look completely different on a tiny phone screen compared to a giant desktop monitor.

A modern website can hide a complicated system of technologies underneath a polished surface. Features like online shopping, customer accounts, or connections to company databases require serious technical skills to build and maintain. Plus, the website needs to be designed for phones and tablets, as well as be secured against hackers. And, to wrap it up, website maintenance where software is patched or upgraded is also real work that needs to be done.

Websites also need to be:

All of these things take expertise and ongoing effort. But because these aspects aren't as obvious, they often get less attention and resources. Teams, whether they're managed by a committee or not, rarely discuss these 'invisible' parts of the website as much as they do the features that are front and center.

Of course, this doesn't mean you need the absolute fanciest technology in the world. But neglecting the basics – those things that affect how visitors experience the site - is just as bad as having outdated information on the site.

What can you do? If you're in charge of the website, try using it on a slow connection (turn your WiFi off!). If possible, test the site on an older, slower phone or tablet. See how it performs for yourself. If it's slow, find out what it takes to speed it up. If the menus and navigation are too complicated, especially on a mobile device, look for ways to simplify things.

Oh, and one more thing: leave your developers alone when they're working! Coding is like writing. It requires concentration, and interruptions make it hard to get back in the groove.

People generally want to feel they are effective at work. They want to see the results of their work. They don't want to fight to get things done.

Sadly, many work environments create obstacles that make it difficult for employees to feel effective.

Worse, there's the paradox of "lowering productivity by adding people". It makes intuitive sense that when a person leaves, a team has fewer people to get work done.

However, when we add people (especially a large number at once), the team often slows down. The new person needs help getting into systems, learning workflow, asking questions, and so on. This is especially bad with new programmers, who often need few months to get really comfortable and productive with the code.

In general terms, the key struggles building and maintaining a high-quality web team are:

The solution? Respect these challenges and ensure that the team is shown the respect of any other group. Make sure the team has a clear set of goals and can request the resources needed to be successful. Share metrics with the team so they can celebrate successful improvements and also help solve problems that might not be apparent to others.

Building a remarkable company website requires determination and a long-term perspective:

The Bottom Line

People are often fooled that a website is easy to create or keep running. True website success follows from a clear strategy that is supported by consistent execution. The team needs to be focused, supported, and work prioritized so everyone can see the key results that are needed for audiences to click on a search result, then return later.