Websites are a great way to create an audience, provide information, or promote a product. However, managing a website is a lot more work than it sounds, and often requires an entire team of people with various specializations. So what skills do you need to manage a website?
Website management requires you to have the technical knowledge of how to publish your content and update your website. You need to have a good grasp of how to promote your site and have it rank higher on search algorithms; an understanding of SEO is crucial. Moreover, proper work ethic and a quality check on content are also mandatory.
These are all the basics of running a successful website that garners traffic and achieves a long lifespan. So learning the ins and outs and recognizing exactly what entails a properly managed website, is key for a well-managed website.
What Skills Make a Well-Managed Website
Managing a website requires an individual or team with a multitude of different skills working in tandem with each other. It is a detail-intensive job with a lot of different aspects to it that all need to be adequately worked on.
Good Marketing
Having the ability to put your website out there to the public is crucial to its success. The more eyeballs you can attract to the existence of your website, the more traffic your website generates. Furthermore, this will increase your search result ranking as well, snowballing your website into getting more traffic.
The biggest aspect of good marketing is running a successful social media campaign. This is key as all social media collectively have billions of users that range across almost every possible demographic, including those in the market for the niche your website is based on.
Luckily for you, critical data collected over the years can help you pinpoint how exactly to target your Ad in order to resonate with the audience you intend to reach.
| Type of Ads that appeals to each demographic | Gen z (16-23) | Millennials (24-37) | Gen X(38-56) | Baby Boomers(57-64) |
| Give me product information | 40% | 45% | 52% | 57% |
| Be entertaining | 42% | 40% | 38% | 28% |
| Be relevant to me/my identity | 34% | 28% | 27% | 27% |
| Give me personalized advertisements | 28% | 28% | 30% | 20% |
| Promote diversity and inclusivity | 21% | 19% | 13% | 10% |
This, and data similar to this has been collected extensively in order to help advertisers promote their product better and to have their audiences resonate with them more. It’s a win-win. Understanding these figures and how to mold your advertising campaign around them is what you will need in order to successfully create and manage the growth of your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an entire field of study that helps identify what aspects of your website matter most when it comes to having it rank high on any search engine’s algorithm. You can use this information and hone your website so that it attracts more clicks.
This is a delicate job, and making sure that your hire is experienced and dependable is vital. An unskilled search engine optimizer can damage the reputation of a website as well as its future prospects. However, in the same vein, they can also be the catalyst that launches a website to unprecedented success. It’s all very high stakes, and skilled management in this regard is vital to your website’s prosperity.
Web Development
This is another highly technical set of skills that you will likely need to have in order to run, or in this case even start your website.
Indeed, basic IT skills such as managing firewalls are a requirement, but being highly proficient in programming languages commonly used for web development such as HTML, XHTML, Javascript, and CSS is also considered a necessity for modern website management.
You should also know yourself, or at least hire someone who knows how to work their way around database management systems such as Access and MySQL.
Content Creation
It goes without saying that a website without high-quality content that retains user retention cannot succeed. It is therefore vital that the caliber of your content is at the forefront of your priorities if you are supervising a business.
Nothing that we have discussed so far can yield much fruit if your viewer retention is low. No amount of search engine optimization you do can give much benefit if the algorithm notices that users are not interacting with your content or staying at your website for long.
So having the skills to retain a standout quality of content when put against similar sites in your industry is key to ensuring the survival of a website you are managing.
Time Management
Time management is a delicate process that needs to have very strict stipulations and deadlines. This is because you want users to regularly visit your site and also stay, which requires regular updates or improvements to the structure and content of your website.
Strictly following deadlines need to be considered mandatory and you need someone who is skillful enough at scheduling to be able to regulate everyone’s workflow adequately and in a timely fashion.
Managing Finances
This is something that goes along with most of the points we have made here previously. Most aspects of managing a website require some amount of finances, especially if your scale is large and you have opted to delegate different tasks to different hires. Being able to skillfully manage the expenses that your site rakes up is a requirement in order to give longevity to your website.
As an example, advertisements, as we previously discussed, when done on the internet usually operate on a pay-per-click model. What this means is that you have to pay for each click that an advertisement for your product generates, which can vary from day to day. However, you are also usually given the option to create a specified budget, that when reached, will cap your advertisement being shown to users for the rest of a set time period.
Knowing what limit to set on this can be the difference between a successful campaign and financial ruin, as with any other similar budgeting decision.
Planning For The Future
Resting on the laurels of a successfully running website is the best way to have your users get bored of your offerings and your traffic tank. For this reason, it is necessary to have a working plan for the future of your website from the development of its offerings to its expansion in the future.
You can communicate these plans to your users and make them excited for what’s to come. More engagement will mean more retention, so understanding how to properly plan for the future is something that you will need in order to best run your website.
FAQs
Do You Need a Social Media Presence To Bring Traffic To Your Website?
It is not exactly necessary to run a social media campaign but is definitely recommended as the huge viewer base you gain from a social media presence is hard to replicate through other means.
Why Is My Email Campaign Failing?
It is possible that you have not marketed your newsletter well, or perhaps have done it to the wrong demographic. You could also be experiencing technical issues with the users signing up or with the process of inboxing.
What Is The Most Important Feature Of A Website?
Many studies have shown that consumers prefer those websites that host quality and engaging content. If a site has irrelevant content, more than half of the viewers click off the site very quickly and don’t tend to come back. Moreover, viewers also appreciate if the site looks modern and is easy to navigate.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, you will need a wide range of skills, or at least a very versatile team to manage a website adequately. There are nuances that you will need to understand with every aspect of the job. Good marketing, optimization for search engines, and proper management of cash and workflow are key to ensuring the longevity of the website you are running.