IT Week: As marketing director of web site designer UKWebCo.com, what significant trends have you seen in the industry recently?
Zamir Cajee: There has been a significant increase in e-commerce – it has really exploded in the past 18 months. Content management solutions have also taken off, because a five-page brochure-style web site is no longer enough. Content must not just be relevant but continually updated, too. We spend a lot of time providing solutions that make it easy to control sites and update the content. If web managers have to look at the code or deal with other barriers, updating may not happen. Awareness has also risen in the past 12 months about what needs to be done to a site once it’s launched.
Who do you usually liaise with at a client level?
It depends on the organisation. If it is an information-based business-to-business web site, then the IT manager will usually take the lead, but if it is a business-to-consumer web site then sales and marketing lead the discussion. Generally, though, the IT manager will be brought in to vet the technology and to continuously monitor it over time. We’re finding marketing staff are getting more IT-literate and project managers today have usually grown up reading IT journals alongside marketing publications.
What are the most critical factors in running a successful web site?
Search engine optimisation is critical to any site. Our business has grown organically and almost 90 percent of that is attributable to search marketing, so we practise what we preach in that respect. The key search engines have more than 100 criteria to assess a web site and it’s important you don’t do anything that prohibits or makes it hard for those search engines to reference your site. For example, search engines can’t read splash intros – they’re looking for rich content on the home page, so your content should be keyword-rich and replaced on a regular basis, because this will also lift its ranking.
How do web managers choose between the huge variety of solutions on the market?
Because the industry is unregulated anyone can say they are a web site designer, so it is very difficult for a client to compare two different quotes for the same piece of work. It is something IT managers are very familiar with. They must look at previous customers of the company, and gauge how happy they were with their work, and look to see if the firm has ISO accreditations. A “cheaper” option can end up costing a lot more, but we’ll say if we can’t provide the correct solution a prospective client is looking for. The client must also be aware of how much work a web site is for them, in managing orders, putting new products onto the site on an ongoing basis, and so on.
Is it not easier for firms to manage all this in-house then?
There is a lack of knowledge out there, and our experience allows us to spot the potential problems and guide our customers past them. There are so many trip hazards in our industry – such as negotiating legal issues and online fraud protection – that we add value because our core business is the web.
About Zamir Cajee
Cajee has been marketing director for UKWebCo.com since 2004.
His experience in developing web-based solutions started with a job as a web site designer in 1995.
