What does a marketer need to decide in a website build?
The decisions that should stay with marketing are about the brand and the customer: the goals, the audiences, the plan, the trade-offs that change what visitors see, and when to launch. Technical choices, task order and day-to-day checks can be delegated, as long as you can always see what was decided and why.
Decisions that are yours
- The goals and how success will be measured.
- The audiences and which matter most.
- Brand voice and visual direction.
- The plan: what will be built, approved once.
- Trade-offs visitors will notice, such as which offer leads or which content retires.
- When the site is ready to launch.
Decisions you can delegate
- How components and templates are structured.
- The order work is done in.
- Hosting and deployment setup.
- Testing tools and routine quality checks.
- Redirects, with a review of the most important ones.
How to keep your decisions few
- Agree the plan up frontMost later questions are answered by a plan everyone approved.
- Set defaultsDecide routine choices once so they don’t come back.
- Ask for a recommendationEvery question should arrive with a suggested answer and the reason.
- Put a deadline on itIf no one answers in time, the recommendation goes ahead.
- Read a log, skip the meetingA written record of what happened replaces most status meetings.
How Cypher handles this
You make about three decisions a build. Two are gates: approving the Blueprint and signing off UAT. The rest arrive as cards with Cypher’s pick, the reason and a deadline; say nothing and it goes ahead with its pick. Everything else is settled by the leads and logged.
Questions people ask
Should marketing approve every page design?
Approve the design direction, components and templates. Reviewing every page slows the build without adding much.
What if we disagree with a default?
Say so early and make it a rule, so it applies to everything similar from then on.
Who should own the decisions?
One named person with the authority to decide, usually the marketing lead for the site.