Marketer building a website — how to pull your weight without the technical know-how?

Whether you’re a marketer or a copywriter, chances are, at some point in your career a client or an employer has given you the task of creating a website from scratch. Unless you’re a one of those marketing unicorns who feel equally comfortable with marketing, design and code, you’ll need someone to help you out on the design and development side. Therefore, you will possibly be sharing the task with a web designer and or/ a front-end developer. If you’re new to your job, or to the task of managing a website project, there are several things that can boost your confidence and help you succeed, even if you lack the technical skills. As a marketer, you don’t have to know everything about building a website, but you play an essential part in creating a website that not only works but serves its business purpose.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as a marketer working on a web design project. Keep them in mind and you’ll be pulling your weight in any that-looks-way-too-techy kind of web project.

Find inspiration

Even before your very first meeting with the designs side of the project, you’re going to have to have one thing worked out for yourself — what do you think are good websites, what do you like and what do you not like (both professionally and personally). Also, what are the tastes of your client or employer, and do you agree with them? If not, what will you present to them to demonstrate that you know what route to take moving forward? In order to do that, to get your confident and inspired — have a look around and see which companies have mastered the art of creating awesome websites with that special wow factor that everyone wished they had. Research and build a winning portfolio of already existing websites, study them and be sure that no one can turn a blind eye if you say this is what we want to achieve, and this is how we’re going to do it.

Learn the Lingo

During my very first job as a startup content marketer, I got to work with a great designer on several website and design projects As an aspiring content manager with almost zero experience in creating content for web — I was constantly being told by the designer that I have to get rid of the widows in my content or the website would look “freaking ugly”. “You need to change that sentence, there’s a widow” was a daily reminder I got from him. I didn’t want to look any less experienced than I already was, so I never asked him what the problem was. I just tweaked the copy, hoping all the widows were gone. After a few embarrassing moments realizing the windows were still there, I googled it only to find out a widow is a very short line — usually one word, or the end of a hyphenated word — at the end of a paragraph or column that is considered a poor typography as it leaves too much white space between paragraphs or at the bottom of a page. Knowing that beforehand would have saved ma a lot of time and effort. From HEX-codes and wireframes to typeface and visual hierarchy. There’s so much design jargon to get to grips with before you can actually have a productive conversation with a designer. But this also works the other way around, make sure your designer understands all your marketing lingo — communication is key when building something great.

Declutter

Ever got mesmerised by a website that barely had anything in it? Barely any content, any images, nor shiny bells and whistles? Just like me, I bet you have. Some websites just work because they are so clean and simplistic, and that’s exactly where their attractiveness lies. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from design, it’s that less is more. As a marketer, one of your main roles is to to declutter the project and the visuals from anything that doesn’t belong or without which you could do without. When working with outsourced agencies, another funny thing I’ve noticed is that if you request something incredibly minimalistic, they can propose you a fee almost double than it would be for a standard, slightly messy/traditional website design. Minimalism is definitely in fashion when it comes to web design, anyone who can deliver it will be valued and very often incredibly over-priced. Bring your decluttering-magic to the table as a marketer, and you can be sure you will deliver results that will not disappoint.

Walk a mile in your customers’ shoes

Or ask someone close to you to do it for you. When you spend weeks at a time on one single project, more often than not you lose the ability to see the outcome objectively. You might start the project off thinking you’ll build it from the viewpoint of an average consumer, but whether you like it or not, you’ll become attached to your progress very soon and lose that neutral perspective. Make sure to every now and then distant yourself from what you’re building, and see it through someone’s eyes who has never seen it before. Why are they on this website, what are they looking for, can they find it, is the user journey logical and pleasant and is the whole experience a visually pleasing one? Ask those questions from yourself on a daily basis, and ask someone else who can give you honest feedback.

Here’s some research on things that have helped me while creating websites.