Who owns the content?
For a medium-to-large site where the content is updated regularly, as it should be, it will
soon become impossible for one person to be able to update all the content. It is logical
and practical to distribute the responsibility for owning and developing different sec-
tions of the site to the people in an organisation who have the best skills and knowledge
to develop that content. For example, in a large financial services company, the part of
the business responsible for a certain product area should update the copy referring to
their products. One person will update copy for each of savings accounts, mortgages,
travel insurance, health insurance and investments. For a PC supplier, different content
developerswill be required for the product information, financing, delivery information
and customer service facilities. Once the ownership of content is distributed throughout
an organisation, it becomes crucial to develop guidelines and standards that help ensure
that the site has a coherent ‘feel’ and appearance. The nature of these guidelines is
described in the sections that follow.Who owns the format?
The format refers to different aspects of the design and layout of the site commonly
referred to as its ‘look and feel’. The key aim is consistency of format across the whole
web site. For a large corporate site, with different staff working on different parts of the
site, there is a risk that the different areas of the site will not be consistent. Defining a
clear format or site design templatefor the site means that the quality of the site and
customer experience will be better since:
the site will be easier to use– a customer who has become familiar with using one area
of the site will be able to confidently use another part of the site;
the design elements of the site will be similar– a user will feel more at home with the site
if different parts look similar;
the corporate image and branding will be consistent with real-world branding(if this is an
objective) and similar across the entire site.
To achieve a site of this quality it is necessary for written standards to be developed.
These may include different standards such as those shown in Table 9.5. The standards
adopted will vary according to the size of the web site and company. Typically, larger
sites, with more individual content developers, will require more detailed standards.
Note that it will be much easier to apply these quality standards across the site if the
degree of scope for individual content developers to make changes to graphics or naviga-
tion is limited and they concentrate on changing text copy. To help achieve consistency,
the software used to build the web site should allow templates to be designed that spec-
ify the menu structure and graphical design of the site. The content developers are then
simply adding text- and graphics-based pages to specific documents and do not have to
worry about the site design.Who owns the technology?
The technology used to publish the web site is important if a company is to utilise fully
the power of the Internet. Many standards such as those in Table 9.5 need to be man-
aged in addition to the technology. The technology decision becomes more significant
when a company wants to make its product catalogue available for queries or to takeCHAPTER 9· MAINTAINING AND MONITORING THE ONLINE PRESENCE
Content developer
A person responsible
for updating web pages
within part of an
organisation.
Site design
template
A standard page layout
format which is applied
to each page of a web
site.