They know you need to be fast. They just can’t make it happen.
The business world has structured itself a certain way for good reason. We have people who do and people who manage those who do. It’s for good reason. People focused on the doing, particularly where it involves technical implementation, often become overwhelmed by the sheer scope of their endeavour. They can lose perspective on the bigger picture. The world of marketing is no different.
Seeing the Wood for the Trees
Whether you are designing and developing a website or building a web server, there are a vast amount of technologies of which to stay abreast and keep all these details in ones head. Both web hosts and web developers jobs often resemble that of an orchestra conductor – balancing so many competing objectives. Digital Marketing Managers have a slightly loftier view of the online landscape. This affords them more head space to consider the relevant factors necessary to make a productive online presence. More time to research. More time to stumble across the wealth of blogs on the importance of a fast website.
Marketing Managers are also closer to the consumer, whether through direct customer contact or via metrics. They will be more likely to see feedback left by potential customers who abandoned their search for the desired product, service or information because the whole process was agonisingly slow.
Marketing Managers are the ones most likely to trawl through your website analytics reasoning about visitors new and returning bounce rates, conversions, page views and time on site. In the process of examination, they will discover the lack of Fast.
Marketing is Close the Coal Face
They are also under the pump. As implied by the phrase, ‘the purpose of Marketing [ Department] is to make Sales [ Department ] superfluous’. If sales are lagging, marketing feels the pressure. Marketing needs an answer and a slow website may be one. It’s also something that is easy to explain. We all know what slow is and there are not many people who don’t know what a slow web experience feels like. It’s also generally not the Marketing Manager’s fault, not directly anyway.
One way or another, the person responsible for marketing your website knows your website needs to be fast. Why can’t they make it so?
What Your Web Developers Will Say
Once the Marketing Manager is aware the website needs to be faster, they need to decide whose job it is. They will normally start with a conversation with their web developer. The web developer will have one or more of the following responses:
- Feels fast enough to them.
- It’s slow because of the amount of content on the website
- It’s a web server problem – talk to the web host.
To understand more on why your website speed is not top of mind for most web developers, see our blog article Why your web designer won’t keep your website Fast.
What Your Web Host Will Say
The switched-on marketing manager will then seek a second opinion by contacting their web host, who will respond with one or more of the following:
- Feels fast enough for them
- It’s slow because of the amount of content on the website
- It’s a web development problem – talk to the web developer.
To understand more on why your web host won’t focus on Fast see our blog article Why your website won’t be fast with Traditional Web Hosts.
The Marketing Manager is now stuck with a problem. The answers by the web developer and the web host may be technically correct, but the managers’ focus on strategy has left them ill-equipped on technical matters and not able to decipher the true causes of the slowness. They’re at an impasse on how to get Fast.
Unless they are really determined, website speed will remain illusory.
The Way Forward
Website speed is the mystical union of web development and web hosting. It requires both parties to work together with a focus on speed. Unless you have an integrated development and server team at your disposal, with speed as a goal, it will be difficult to master speed in the long run. Hence the dawn of performance host, Hilenium.
Hilenium Hosting was founded, for this reason, to give Marketing Manager access to a team of people whose sole focus was website speed. We will host your website and engage with your team to get you fast and keep you fast.