How Much Do Marketers Need to Know About Web Development?

If you’re a digital marketer, you may spend most of your time working on PPC campaigns, SEO content, email marketing, social media, or a mixture of all of the above. Web development is a very different skillset and a more technical discipline that marketers may know little to nothing about. However, web development tasks are often centred around digital marketing activities, and the setup of a website can influence the marketing you are able to conduct – for better or for worse. Today we’re taking a look at exactly how much marketers need to know about web development and how these two specialities work together within your digital marketing system.

Technical SEO: Where Digital Marketing and Web Development Overlap

One way in which web development and marketing overlap is with technical SEO. We’ve blogged before about why SEO architecture is so important – having a good site architecture helps both users and bots to navigate your website. This means having a logical hierarchy of pages and this being reflected in the structure, navigation, menus, breadcrumbs, sitemap and more. Planning out the structure of the website before it is built is integral to laying the foundations of SEO success. For a deeper dive, take a look at our articles on the subject:

An Introduction to SEO Architecture

What Is Deep Site Architecture In SEO?

The above means that web development and SEO certainly go hand-in-hand. It means that web developers and marketers both hugely benefit from understanding technical SEO when it comes to building websites. These two teams can work together to create an optimised website from scratch, and to continue to apply technical SEO knowledge as the website changes or grows over time. It doesn’t mean that marketers need to know the ins and outs of how a website is built, but having the theoretical knowledge of technical SEO can help and is certainly linked to web development and design.

HTML For Digital Marketers

When it comes to making changes to a website, there are some things marketers or other stakeholders are able to do, with a certain amount of technical knowledge and access. But most things beyond adding text and images need the help of a web developer. Speaking personally, I like to see if I can do something myself first, so I tend to log in and have a look around the admin area of the website to see if I can change what I want to, before handing it over to our busy web developers if I find I don’t have the knowledge or access. While some changes are easy for most users to complete – such as uploading or editing blog posts – there may be some changes that are slightly trickier, but still possible if you have the know-how. Take HTML for example. HTML (hypertext markup language) allows you to format images or text, for example by making text bold, aligning images left or right, or even adding some schema markup. When you’re looking at HTML code for the first time it can look a little daunting, but by understanding what it all means, you’ll soon be able to use it to make changes – useful if you’re using a CMS that isn’t quite working in the way you expect. Read our article on HTML for marketers to get to grips with the basics. It may just be the difference between not knowing how to do something and having to pass it to your technical team, and being able to quickly make small amendments yourself.

Web Developers and Digital Marketers: The Dream Team

Of course, any web developer will tell me that HTML isn’t actually a programming language and doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s involved in building a website. So when we do need big changes made to a website, it’s time to call in the dev team. This is where the magic of marketing meets technical excellence. As a marketer, you may have the need for a complete redesign of a webpage, for example to promote a new event. You might want a big banner advertising the event, with a registration form allowing users to sign up – all of which takes place on a landing page you will be using for a PPC campaign, so the success of your campaign hinges on working with the development team to amend this page. You might also realise that you have lots of new events coming up and it would be great to have a calendar on the website that displays the upcoming events and allows the user to click through to find out more and sign up to each one. This goes beyond the current functionality of the website, so you need to work with the design team to get a mock-up of the new pages, as well as the development team to find out what is possible and how it should all work. You might discuss different options, such as a quicker and easier solution that suits your needs, or something more comprehensive that takes a little longer but comes with additional benefits. All of this can be discovered when the marketing, design and web development teams communicate and work together to find the best solution.

All of this is to say that digital marketers don’t need to know very much about web development, but having knowledge in some of the more technical areas of marketing, or where marketing meets development, can certainly help. Understanding the fundamentals of website architecture, SEO, HTML, CSS, schema markup, and using your CMS is all very useful. You don’t need to know about coding, but it certainly helps to have great relationships and communication between all departments – just like we do here at SilverDisc.

If you would like any help with your digital marketing or website design and development, get in touch.