A dedicated web manager, (aka. website manager, digital manager, online manager, chief web officer, content manager) is someone who coordinates and supervises all, or partial aspects of your website presence. For example, strategic planning, design and development, security and backups, domain acquisition, content creation, and marketing.
If you are a website owner or have an idea for a new website, you can save a lot of time and money by hiring a professional web manager.
The bottom line is that a qualified website manager will help you strengthen your brand online, improve and administer your website, and increase your web traffic and conversions.
Not only that, but you will also avoid a lot of unnecessary stress that is often associated with running a website. There are literally hundreds of things that can go wrong. It pays to have someone on your side who is equally dedicated to your online success.
Your website manager will be able to offer the most cost-efficient and sustainable solutions to reach your online goals.
So what can a dedicated website manager really do for you? Please read below to see the scope of work that might be involved in a professional web management service.
Your web manager can oversee the following:
- Contracts revision and mediation
- Provision of domains and hosting
- Initial design and development
- Securing and hardening your website
- Adding new website features
- Web content management
- White-hat SEO and link building
- Conversion optimization
- Email marketing management
- Social media marketing management
- Web traffic analysis and reports
- Affiliate marketing management
Contracts revision and mediation
Unfortunately, the web industry is filled with service companies that take advantage of people who are not familiar with web technologies. Contractual agreements are legally binding documents. So before subscribing to any service or partnership, it’s worth having a professional web manager check each contract for inconsistencies, inflated prices, or hidden costs. More on web contract revision and mediation.
- Revising existing and new contracts on behalf of clients
- Comparing various providers and their quotations
- Providing recommendations based on years of experience
- Mediating and negotiating with service companies
Provision of domains and hosting
Choosing the right domain name and hosting environment is very important for the best user experience, search rankings, as well as general marketing of the website. Let a web manager help you find the most appropriate domain name based on keyword research and web browsing and buying trends. Power your website with reliable hosting. Every website needs a good and secure hosting environment that won’t hinder its future progress. More on how to choose the best domain name.
- Choosing the most effective domain names based on research
- Mediating in negotiations for the acquisition of existing domains
- Choosing the most appropriate hosting provider
- Configuring the hosting environment
- Transferring files and entire websites
- Setting up emails and autoresponders
Initial design and development
Unfortunately, many website owners have issues with their web design and development companies. Rightfully so, they are sometimes charged huge fees for things that they will never use or didn’t want in the first place. A good web manager will help you deal with your web development company and streamline the entire design process. More importantly, a web manager will protect your interests and help you build a website that will address your specific needs and future goals. A highly qualified website manager can oversee and check all technical aspects of web development work. Most clients can’t do that by themselves. More on web design and development.
- Helping to choose the best website mockup to meet your needs
- Constructing the most effective website link architecture
- Liaising with web designers and developers throughout the process
- Supervising the quality of the design and the development
Securing and hardening your website
One of the most important but generally overlooked aspects of web management is website security. If you have any doubts about its importance, let me ask you this question: What use is developing a website and spending money on content development when the site can be hacked and all work may be lost? The more traffic a website receives, the more it is exposed to various hacks. Hardening your website against malicious bots and hackers is crucial to your online success. Damage from a hacked website is often impossible to repair and can additionally result in customer lawsuits. More on website security.
- Installing security and plugin updates
- Hardening existing installation and securing the website
- Liaising with external agencies, such as firewall and CDN providers
- Configuring and adding backup systems
- Increasing your website speed
Adding new website features
Sometimes in order to increase the number of visitors to a website one needs to expand the online offer by creating new functions with a substantial pull factor. For example newsletters, polls, contests, memberships, discount codes, etc. are all additional functionalities that may help increase conversions and optimize the user experience. Web programming is expensive and can be difficult to understand, so it´s always better to have someone in the know manage it for you. More on web design and development
- Finding new ways to attract visitors
- Adding new applications and expanding website functionalities
- Installing and configuring additional modules
- Outsourcing and managing additional web programming
Web content management
Many industry experts will agree that ‘Content is King’. Indeed, without interesting and useful content, the Internet would quickly become dull. An experienced web content manager can help you create and curate web content to a high standard. Better content will captivate and engage your visitors and increase your website’s SEO and popularity across social media channels. Quality content must not only be written to a high standard but also include images, supporting graphics, and videos. Each page or each article on your website should make an impact on your end-users, as well as search engines. Today, with the use of keyword research, producing the right type of content turned into a science. Learn about the job of Web Content Manager
- Developing high-quality web content
- Editing and uploading the content
- Sourcing and editing supporting images
- Creating and uploading other supporting media
- Curating content for maximum exposure
- Liaising with external content providers
White-hat SEO and link building
The main purpose of search engine optimization and link building is to help to increase your website’s rankings across search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. Everyone knows how important it is to rank at the top of Google for specific keywords. Good search rankings can bring in a lot of web traffic to your website and increase conversions. Your web manager will guide you through the entire process and build and manage your link-building campaigns. More on search engine optimization.
- Tidying up hyperlinks and improving linking architecture
- Creating link-baits that increase backlinks
- Finding influential link partners
- Liaising with external SEO link builders
- Guest posting to high-quality websites
- Optimizing your website loading times
Conversion optimization
Conversion optimization is an advanced method of measuring user experience and optimizing it to increase your online conversions. A conversion could be a sale of a particular product or service, a lead registration, or simple newsletter signup. A professional web manager will help you construct better landing pages and achieve more from your online presence. More on conversion optimization to boost your online leads.
- Designing landing pages
- A/B testing with conversion optimization
- Improving and optimizing the end-user journey
- Finding new lead generation methods
Email Marketing Management
One of the most effective methods of keeping in touch with your new and existing audiences is via direct email. For most businesses, email marketing offers the highest conversion of all other marketing methods. However, the preparation and running of email campaigns is not easy and presents numerous challenges such as email wording, formatting, design, domain blacklisting, analytics, etc. Learn more about email marketing management to boost your email campaigns.
- Setting up and designing email capture forms
- Configuring sending servers
- Designing email templates
- Sending emails regularly
- Generate reports on email statistics
Social media marketing and management
Today social media marketing plays a major role in any company’s online presence. The technology accommodates quick access to your existing followers and people who might be interested in your products or services in the future. An experienced web manager can help you create appropriate social media channels that will complement your website, enhance your online presence, and find potential customers. More about social media marketing
- Creating dedicated pages on social networks
- Linking social channels to website and vice versa
- Regularly updating social channels with exciting posts
- Sourcing additional content for social media
- Configuring and running social media ad campaigns
Web traffic analysis and reports
Without being able to analyze your web traffic data and see what your visitors are really doing when they are visiting your site, it can be tough to improve and increase conversions. A professional web manager will help you to add and configure a statistics gathering engine on your website and follow up with easy-to-understand web usage reports. More on web traffic analysis and reports
- Setting up statistics for your website
- Configuring stats gathering engine to eliminate false data
- Interpreting the collected data to maximize ROI
- Generating reports in a simple-to-understand format
- Configuring additional goals and sales funnels
Affiliate marketing management
Affiliate marketing helps in getting the word out as it provides financial incentives to users who recommend your product or services. For each qualified sale, most online affiliate programs offer 10-40% of the amount to the promoting affiliate. Many big and small companies use web managers to create affiliate programs to drive targeted traffic to the website and increase sales. This method also helps to build links organically. Learn more about affiliate marketing management.
- Creating or finding suitable products or services for affiliation
- Setting up the affiliate infrastructure and fees
- Creating linking media, such as banners or videos
- Helping to find affiliates willing to promote your website
- Managing the affiliate traffic and website conversions
Hire a dedicated and professional web manager
If you need professional, unbiased advice, or you would like to outsource your web management and hire a dedicated web manager, please request a free consultation. Also, don’t forget to visit the Trusted Providers page for the most essential, trustworthy, but still very cost-efficient web services that will help you with your online business.
To find out more about what to require from your future web manager you can refer to this article: Website Manager Definition and Job Description. You can also refer to a Wikipedia entry on the subject – Chief Web Officer.