Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Lazar Bošković, creative director, AgitPROP
But for a serious, modern company, all three answers are wrong and insufficient. A company website today is a serious and complicated thing, which needs to be worked on by almost all sectors of the company … and some outside associate on top, with expert knowledge. In short, there’s work here for both marketing and PR, and the IT sector, and the sales sector, and the finance sector, and the legal sector…
To build a website, you can hire an agency that offers full service, or a team of individuals which should include: copywriter, designer and developer. In both cases, there is still work for an Internet consultant – both before and after the creation of a website. After all, who else could give you such a comprehensive overview of all that work on a site encompasses as the one below:
Marketing & PR sector – appropriate and fresh internet communication
A company website is its own media, so as a serious communication channel, it logically relates to marketing and public relations. These two sectors (regardless whether they are merged or separate) are most responsible to take care of the internet content, the design of what appears on the site and what is shared on company’s social media – to put it simply, to deal with online image and brands.
This includes online promotion, ie. all forms of online advertising, and they are certainly the most responsible party to work on the SEO, because the most important thing for SEO is text optimization. They should also be involved in web analytics, tracking the results of online activities. And all this will do little good if they don’t update the website regularly, keeping it fresh with news, blog posts and other information.
In short, they have to excel in work with files that carry the extensions such as DOC(X), XLS(X), PDF, JPG, GIF, PNG, MP3, MP4 … and that besides the basic Office package they also know how to tackle software for image, video and sound processing. Because of the needs of their job, they need to know how to send mass emails in a lawful and decent manner, and not spam.
IT sector – reliable and safe internet operations
Programming a website naturally belongs to the IT sector, or, more precisely – they don’t have to know how to code, but they need to have knowledge about the basics of HTML, PHP, and CSS, so that they can communicate effectively with outsourced site makers. And they are also the first ones who come to colleagues’ minds when something goes wrong in the CMS…
IT people decide where and how the site will be hosted, and those with more knowledge also deal with its technical maintenance and various server settings, domains, subdomains, routing, short URLs … In times of growing cyber crime, concern for cyber security is especially important, both of its aspects actually – the safe internet behaviour of people within the firm and safe work of hardware and software connected to the Internet. They determine access rights to various Internet services, the most important of which is the employee e-mail, as well as their protection against spam.
The new technologies that companies use in their business heavily rely on the Internet (Internet of Things, Big Data, Software as a Service …). And integration of business software (ERP, CRM …) with the company website is a whole different story.
Sales department – profitable online stores
E-Commerce isn’t just your ordinary webshop anymore. Apart from sales of products and services, today it also includes electronic money transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, electronic data exchange, and automated data collection systems. The sales department takes care of potential customers and their conversion into business partners and customers / clients / consumers. So, both B2B and B2C, and in some cases even B2B2C.
Establishing a quality e-commerce is not possible without full cooperation with the Marketing Sector. It’s not just about creating content on products or services on the site (texts, photos, videos …), but it also applies to price policies, creating promotional actions and discount systems. And one of these two sectors should also deal with complaints (and praise and suggestions) coming from site visitors.
The Sales Sector and the Finance Sector should also agree on all the acceptable forms of electronic payments and under what conditions they will be provided in the e-shop, and they also need to take into account the tax rates for different markets and different goods or services.
Legal sector – lawful online presence
Many are unaware that a serious company website has to meet numerous local laws, such as the: Advertising Act, the Electronic Commerce Act, the Electronic Communications Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Personal Data Protection Act, the Copyright Act and related rights … All the other sectors in a company must have some knowledge (and respect) for these laws, but the legal sector is most responsible to have its say in this area.
The protection of intellectual property on the Internet is very important, and it goes both ways – protection of own rights and protection of the intellectual property of others. Companies that have their trademarks – brands – know how important this is, along with copyright protection for all content on the site. This usually sits in the part of the website titled “Terms of Use”, and many leave this page out.
Caring for site visitors, especially after the introduction of GDPR in the EU legislation, is becoming a very important obligation, and relates to protection of privacy and legal collecting, processing and storing of visitor information. If a company has its own e-store, consumer protection, besides the Sales Sector, is the responsibility of the Legal Sector. And let’s not forget the contracts – especially those with external associates on site design.
External associates – professional online appearance
As we have seen, every sector in a company, besides their core business, has plenty to do with the company website. It is theoretically possible to assign someone from a company and hire a web copywriter, web designer and web developer, and to create a good website with them. However, this is not the optimal solution for a serious company, unless its staff includes a person who fits the job description of an Internet consultant, who would oversee and coordinate all the steps in building a website.
A quality and experienced outsourced internet consultant is one who knows what current Internet technologies can offer, and how to optimally match them with the needs and capabilities of the site’s customer. More importantly – he/she knows how to deal with the copywriter, designer and developer of the website, because they speak the “same language”, which clients often don’t fully understand. An Internet consultant knows how to design the architecture of the future site, to plan all the steps of its creation, to monitor and manage the entire process, to harmonize all who are involved in the task, and to do all the necessary final tests before launching the site. He/she guarantees that the entire project will be implemented in accordance with the standards of modern Internet presence.
