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The Web Site: Does Not Belong to Marketing Alone

by Conrad

Imagine that you are going on a vacation with a group of friends, and one of them picks the destination without asking the rest of you. Camping trip to Iraq, anybody? Of course, people care about their vacations way too much for this to ever happen.

To some extent, though, this is happening to firms' Web sites, with Marketing groups driving initiatives by themselves. Large chunks of the e-Business budget end up being allocated to sales ideas, value-added programs, and other intermediary-focused Marketing efforts that generate a small portion of site traffic.

The Web site, however, needs to reflect the company as a whole. While Marketing is an important aspect, the focus should be on good product information and great servicing features. Two things will help to make this happen:

• e-Business departments have to push a "back-to-the-basics" approach, driving resources toward enhancing product and servicing features before adding more "marketing" material
• Operations, Sales, and Product groups have to claim more ownership over the Web site because it is just as much their site as it is Marketing's (regardless of who technically "owns" the Web site)