Okay, so this is a no-brainer; of course web design will be a critical part of your website optimization efforts. However, there are a couple of items to think about here. The first is that in most cases the person doing the web design should not be the same person doing the web development. That may not be the case in smaller organizations where people where several hats, etc. The quality of the design, though, tends to be better when it is done by someone who specializes in design.

Website optimization design takes a special type of designer though. They have to balance some demands that at times may be in conflict with one another. For example, the marketing department might think a slanted menu would be cool, while the web developer thinks that a horizontal css-driven menu will be better. The designer ends up trying to serve both requests.

Ultimately, in your website optimization efforts what the marketing department and the web development team think is of less import than what your customers think. This is where an offshoot of web analytics, called A/B testing, comes into play. Designers play a very key role in A/B testing. Most of the designers we work with actually enjoy doing it too.

The designer gets to create a variety of designs and rather than picking the one Marketing, IT, or the CEO likes best, each of the designs are used with particular goals in mind. Obviously, there are some constraints according to resources available and the extent of the optimization efforts, but as a general rule the design that most positively impacts the bottom line is the “best” one.

The other primary function of a designer will be to know and understand good usability principles (more on that tomorrow), but there are fantastic usability experts out there — use them.

Designers are typically very creative, which is why they are good at what they do, but they have to be realistic as well. For example if the only goal of a particular website is to sell widgets then a flash intro page and animated graphics are probably not the best use of resources (IMHO), but if the site is focused on validation of a premiere offline image flashiness may be critical. It is important for the person managing your website optimization efforts to know the purpose of the website and to communicate that to design personnel.

Web development usually falls under the IT department in large organizations, and is typically outsourced in smaller companies.  Whichever situation you are in, you will face some of the same challenges when you start optimizing your website.  With no discredit to IT departments, as a general rule, their primary focus is not to create an optimized website.  What I mean is, they have security issues, CRM, ERP, administration rights, and a myriad of other priorities that typically trump the marketing department’s requests for web optimization.  However, in most cases, it will be absolutely critical to involve your web team in the process (one exception may be if you have a fairly robust content management system and a person with some basic web skills).

Web site optimization is primarily a customer-focused activity, which means it is primarily a business activity, not a technical activity.  However, you cannot avoid the technical aspects, such as adding content, changing layout, creating additional web pages, changing page names, altering site navigation, and the list could go on forever….  The point is, if you have aspirations to create the optimal web experience for your visitors you have to get buy-in from your development team. 

The other key here is to realize the most web developers are really good at what they do (very general statement), and they may lend you insight to the optimization process that will save you time and money.  Your web developer(s) should be involved in the process because they will help you realistically determine your immediate capabilities and costs associated with expanding capabilities.

The web metrics that developers care about will be completely different than the metrics that marketers care about.  The key for website optimization is to report to your technical team the metrics that will help them make better decisions about the things that they have specific responsibility for.  That means conversion rates are probably not the most valuable metric, but the number of and which pages are crawled by the search engines may be a relevant metric. 

The primary job of the person managing your web optimization efforts will be to give each responsible party the minimum amount of web data that still enables them to complete their job.  That isn’t to keep people in the dark, but to help them keep from getting paralyzed by too much irrelevant information.  There is no hard and fast rule about who needs what; the amount of data you pass on will be as much related to the recipient’s personality as it is to their job function.