Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Planner

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Planner is a strategic and execution-oriented digital role responsible for planning, designing, and optimizing website experiences that meet business goals and user needs. This position combines information architecture, content strategy, user experience planning, analytics, SEO, and project management to deliver measurable improvements in conversion, engagement, and search visibility. The Web Planner works closely with marketing, product, UX, engineering, content, and analytics teams to translate business requirements into prioritized digital initiatives, while maintaining governance, accessibility, and performance standards across web properties.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior Web Producer or Web Coordinator
Digital Marketing Specialist (with web/CMS experience)
Content Strategist or UX Designer with web project exposure

Advancement To:

Senior Web Planner / Senior Web Producer
Digital Product Manager / Web Product Owner
Head of Web Experience / Director of Digital Experience

Lateral Moves:

Content Strategy Lead
UX / Information Architecture Lead
SEO / Growth Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop and maintain the website roadmap and tactical workback plans aligned to product, marketing and business goals; prioritize features, content changes, and technical improvements using metrics-driven rationale and stakeholder input.
Create and own information architecture deliverables (site maps, content models, navigation trees) that improve findability and user flows for multi-device audiences, ensuring consistency across global and localized properties.
Produce detailed functional specifications, wireframes, and annotated page templates for new pages and replatform initiatives, coordinating with UX designers and engineering to ensure requirements are actionable and testable.
Manage the end-to-end launch process for website initiatives — from requirements gathering, sprint planning, QA and UAT coordination to production release and post-launch monitoring — ensuring timely delivery and minimal regression.
Lead content strategy for the site: content audits, editorial calendars, taxonomy definition, content governance and templates, working with content authors to ensure tone, SEO optimization and accessibility compliance.
Drive SEO and organic growth initiatives by collaborating with SEO specialists to implement on-page optimization, metadata standards, URL structures, canonicalization, schema markup, and technical improvements to enhance crawlability and ranking.
Set up, maintain and interpret web analytics frameworks (Google Analytics / GA4, Adobe Analytics) to define KPIs, build dashboards, perform cohort and funnel analyses and report on campaign and feature performance to stakeholders.
Design and execute A/B and multivariate tests (using tools such as Optimizely, Google Optimize or similar) to validate hypotheses for conversion rate optimization (CRO) and iterate on page experiences using statistically sound methodologies.
Coordinate with engineering and DevOps on performance optimization and technical requirements (image optimization, lazy loading, CDN configuration, critical CSS) to meet Core Web Vitals and page speed goals for SEO and UX.
Translate business requirements into user stories and acceptance criteria; prioritize and refine backlog items in partnership with product owners, scrum masters and engineering leads to support agile delivery.
Manage relationships with external agencies, vendors and contractors responsible for creative, development, or analytics work; scope deliverables, review work, and ensure contract SLAs and quality standards are met.
Ensure site-wide accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA or applicable standards), working with designers and developers to remediate accessibility issues and to incorporate accessibility into acceptance criteria and testing.
Maintain and administer the content management system (CMS) governance: templates, content types, workflows, permissions and training for editors to enable scalable content operations and reduce production bottlenecks.
Design cross-channel landing page strategies for paid media, email and social campaigns to maximize conversion and measurement fidelity; coordinate tracking, UTM structures and post-click experiences.
Create and manage tagging strategies and analytics implementation (Google Tag Manager, dataLayer) to ensure accurate capture of events, conversions and eCommerce data for reporting and attribution.
Conduct user research and usability testing (remote or in-person), synthesize insights, and translate qualitative findings into prioritized website improvements and product requirements.
Lead site maintenance and risk mitigation activities such as content expiration, link rot audits, canonical fixes, 301/302 management and coordinating emergency patches or hotfixes with engineering.
Monitor competitor sites, industry trends and platform updates (search engine algorithm changes, browser behavior) to recommend strategic updates to the website roadmap and tactics.
Build and present regular executive-level performance reports, heatmaps, journey analyses and ROI-backed business cases for site improvements, using clear storytelling to influence stakeholders and secure investment.
Implement multi-language and localization planning for global sites, defining content delivery strategy, hreflang implementation and localization QA processes with regional teams or vendors.
Define measurement frameworks and event taxonomies for feature launches to ensure A/B tests and experiments have clear success metrics and that product hypotheses are validated against data.
Oversee tagging and analytics QA to validate data accuracy after releases; maintain documentation of data definitions and event maps to ensure consistent reporting across teams.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis using analytics platforms and reporting tools to answer operational and strategic business questions.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap by identifying data gaps, proposing instrumentation improvements, and advocating for data quality and governance.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements, ensuring analytics events and APIs provide the insights required for decision-making.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering and web development teams to support prioritized analytics and tagging work.
Provide training and enablement for content authors and marketing teams on CMS best practices, SEO basics, and how to follow web governance processes.
Maintain documentation for site architecture, processes, release notes, and runbooks to reduce single points of failure and accelerate onboarding of new team members.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Website strategy and roadmap development — ability to translate business goals into prioritized site initiatives and measure impact.
Information architecture and content modeling — experience creating sitemaps, navigation structures, content types and taxonomy definitions.
Content Management Systems (CMS) administration and governance — hands-on with platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, or similar.
Web analytics and reporting — strong experience with Google Analytics / GA4, Adobe Analytics, data visualization tools (Looker, Tableau or Power BI) and dashboarding.
SEO — on-page and technical SEO knowledge (metadata, structured data, canonicalization, hreflang, robots, XML sitemaps) and experience working with SEO tools (SEMrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog).
A/B testing and experimentation — designing experiments, hypothesis formulation, statistical significance interpretation, and tools like Optimizely or VWO.
Tag management and event instrumentation — Google Tag Manager, dataLayer design, event mapping and QA processes for accurate analytics capture.
Basic front-end familiarity — understanding of HTML5, CSS3, responsive design principles and ability to read and review front-end code and collaborate with engineers.
UX and wireframing tools — experience using Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Balsamiq, or other prototyping/wireframe tools to communicate page designs.
Project management and agile methodologies — writing user stories, acceptance criteria, backlog grooming, sprint planning, and using tools like JIRA, Asana, or Trello.
Performance optimization — knowledge of Core Web Vitals, page speed techniques, and strategies for mobile-first optimization.
Accessibility standards — understanding WCAG guidelines and practical approaches to remediation and inclusive design.
Basic SQL or ability to work with data teams — to extract user cohorts or validate analytics when necessary.
eCommerce and conversion optimization — experience with product pages, checkout funnels, tracking transactions and improving conversion flows.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management — effectively aligns cross-functional teams, manages expectations and negotiates priorities with business partners.
Analytical and data-driven mindset — combines quantitative and qualitative insights to prioritize work and evaluate outcomes.
Clear written and verbal communication — writes precise requirements, presents performance reports and explains technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
Problem-solving and critical thinking — anticipates risks, identifies root causes and proposes practical solutions.
Prioritization and time management — balances multiple initiatives, deadlines, and shifting business priorities to deliver measurable outcomes.
Collaboration and team orientation — works closely with designers, developers, marketers and analysts; fosters a culture of shared ownership.
Curiosity and continuous learning — keeps up with search, analytics and UX best practices and adapts approaches as platforms evolve.
Attention to detail — ensures content, tagging, and releases are accurate and consistent to avoid measurement and UX regressions.
Facilitation and leadership — leads workshops, discovery sessions and requirement gathering with cross-functional teams.
Customer-centric mindset — advocates for user needs and ensures that changes improve usability and accessibility.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Information Technology, Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Business, or related field; OR equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s in Digital Media, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Digital Marketing, or related discipline.
Certifications in Google Analytics / GA4, SEO, UX, or Project Management (PMP, Scrum Master) are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Information Architecture / UX / HCI
Digital Marketing / Communications
Computer Science / Web Development
Business / Product Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–6+ years of progressive experience in website planning, digital product delivery, content strategy, or related roles.

Preferred:

5+ years in digital/web planning or web production for enterprise or high-traffic consumer websites.
Demonstrated experience leading major site migrations, redesigns or replatforming projects.
Proven track record of improving organic traffic, conversion rates or engagement metrics through combined tactics (SEO, UX, content and experimentation).