Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Website Consultant

🎯 Role Definition

A Website Consultant is an experienced digital professional who partners with clients or internal stakeholders to evaluate, plan, and deliver website improvements that increase traffic, engagement, conversions, and revenue. This role blends technical website auditing (performance, accessibility, SEO), UX and information architecture recommendations, CMS and implementation guidance, and measurement strategy (GA4, GTM, analytics). The Website Consultant leads discovery, prioritization, and hands-on execution or oversight of changes across content, code, infrastructure, and marketing channels, ensuring projects meet business goals and technical best practices.

Primary keywords: Website Consultant, technical SEO, UX audit, site performance optimization, conversion rate optimization (CRO), CMS strategy, Google Analytics, web strategy.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Web Developer or Front-End Developer transitioning into client-facing and strategy work.
SEO Specialist or Technical SEO Analyst moving from execution to strategic consulting.
Digital Marketing Specialist or Content Strategist taking on broader site-level responsibility.

Advancement To:

Senior Website Consultant / Lead Web Strategist
Head of Digital / Director of Web & Digital Strategy
Product Owner / Head of UX & CRO

Lateral Moves:

UX Designer / UX Researcher
SEO Manager / Technical SEO Lead
Digital Project Manager or Agency Account Director

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Conduct comprehensive website audits combining technical SEO, page speed and Core Web Vitals analysis, accessibility (WCAG) checks, and on-page content reviews to produce prioritized roadmaps that improve organic search performance and user experience.
Create detailed technical recommendations for HTML/CSS/JavaScript improvements, image optimization, critical rendering path changes, and lazy loading strategies to reduce page load times and improve mobile performance.
Develop and present actionable CRO strategies, including hypothesis-driven A/B test plans, funnel analysis, and conversion optimization tactics to increase lead generation and ecommerce revenue.
Lead CMS strategy and architecture reviews (WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, Headless CMS) and advise on templates, content models, taxonomy, and publishing workflows to support SEO and editorial efficiency.
Execute keyword research and content gap analysis to inform content strategy, topical clusters, and on-page optimization plans that align with product and marketing goals.
Implement and validate analytics and tagging strategies using GA4 and Google Tag Manager to ensure accurate measurement of traffic, events, conversions, and custom business metrics.
Perform structured site migrations and domain consolidation plans, managing redirects, canonical tags, and preserving search equity while minimizing organic traffic loss.
Collaborate with engineers to design and implement schema.org structured data and rich snippets for products, articles, events, and business listings to improve SERP visibility and click-through rates.
Analyze site architecture and internal linking to improve crawlability and indexation, recommending flat hierarchies and siloing approaches where appropriate to boost topical relevance.
Run technical audits for server and hosting configurations, CDN usage, gzip/brotli compression, HTTP/2, TLS settings, and performance budgets to achieve measurable speed gains.
Provide hands-on front-end adjustments or code reviews for markup, CSS specificity, and JS performance issues, guiding engineering teams to implement sustainable fixes.
Audit mobile UX and responsive design patterns, recommending breakpoint strategy and content prioritization to optimize conversions on small screens.
Establish SEO-friendly content governance and editorial guidelines, including URL conventions, meta tag templates, image alt text policies, and internal linking standards.
Coordinate with paid media and social teams to align landing page experiences and tracking, ensuring cohesive measurement and reduced duplication between channels.
Deliver stakeholder-facing reporting and dashboards (Looker Studio, internal BI) that translate technical metrics into business KPIs and executive summaries.
Train internal teams or client stakeholders on SEO best practices, CMS editing, analytics interpretation, and personalization basics to embed long-term capability.
Scope, estimate, and manage website improvement projects and sprints, balancing technical debt remediation with feature delivery while maintaining quality assurance processes.
Audit third-party scripts and tag managers for performance and privacy implications, recommending tag consolidation, deferral, or server-side tagging where necessary.
Advise on privacy and compliance considerations (cookie consent, dataLayer hygiene, consent mode) and support legal or compliance teams with documentation for audits.
Coordinate accessibility remediation plans and testing protocols (manual checks and automated tooling), ensuring the site meets applicable accessibility standards and improves inclusivity.
Evaluate and recommend ecommerce platform optimizations (checkout UX, product schema, payment flow improvements) that reduce abandonment and increase average order value.
Provide ongoing post-implementation monitoring and iterative optimization to validate impact, measure uplift, and refine tactics based on real user data and A/B test outcomes.
Build technical specs and acceptance criteria for dev tickets, reviewing completed work against performance budgets, SEO requirements, and accessibility standards.
Serve as an escalation point for production incidents related to site outages, broken redirects, indexing issues, or major traffic declines, coordinating rapid response and remediation.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc analytics requests, exploratory data analysis, and troubleshooting of tracking gaps for marketing and product teams.
Contribute to the organization's digital roadmap and web governance policies by recommending scalable processes and prioritized technical debt queues.
Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, marketers, designers, engineers, and external agencies to translate business goals into engineering and content tasks.
Participate in sprint planning, agile ceremonies, and QA cycles to ensure web initiatives are delivered on time, meet acceptance criteria, and adhere to documented standards.
Maintain vendor relationships and evaluate third-party tools for SEO, A/B testing, accessibility, and performance monitoring to ensure best-fit solutions.
Produce documentation, runbooks, and post-mortem reports after major launches or incidents to capture learnings and prevent recurrence.
Support training sessions and workshops to upskill teams on analytics, CMS publishing, SEO fundamentals, and conversion best practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Technical SEO auditing and remediation (crawl analysis, redirects, canonicalization, indexation).
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) setup, event modeling, custom reports, and digital measurement strategy.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) implementation and troubleshooting, including server-side tagging experience.
HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript fundamentals for reviewing front-end code and recommending performance fixes.
CMS platforms expertise (WordPress, Shopify, Drupal, Contentful, or other headless CMS).
Page speed and Core Web Vitals optimization techniques (Lighthouse, WebPageTest, Chrome DevTools).
Structured data implementation (schema.org, JSON-LD) and SERP enhancement strategies.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) frameworks, A/B testing tools (Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize alternatives) and experiment analysis.
Accessibility standards and remediation (WCAG 2.1) and accessibility testing tools.
URL and site migration planning, redirect mapping, and risk mitigation for domain changes.
Basic familiarity with server technologies, CDN configuration, caching strategies, and TLS/HTTP versions.
Analytics visualization and reporting tools (Looker Studio, Tableau, Power BI) and KPI definition.
SEO tooling proficiency (Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz) and log file analysis.
Basic SQL or familiarity with data querying to support deeper analytics investigations.

Soft Skills

Strong client-facing communication, able to explain technical issues to non-technical stakeholders.
Strategic thinking with a commercial mindset—prioritizes initiatives based on impact and effort.
Proven problem-solving skills and attention to detail when diagnosing complex web issues.
Project and time management to manage multiple engagements and deliverables concurrently.
Cross-functional collaboration and influence; works effectively with designers, developers, and marketers.
Presentation and training skills for workshops, executive briefings, and knowledge transfer.
Adaptability to fast-changing digital environments and evolving best practices.
Empathy for end users and an evidence-driven approach to UX decisions.
Negotiation and stakeholder management when balancing competing priorities.
Quality-focused mindset with a principled approach to technical debt and maintainability.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's or Master's degree plus professional certifications such as Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ), Google Tag Manager Certification, HubSpot/Digital Marketing certifications, or accredited UX/Accessibility courses.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science or Web Development
Digital Marketing or Marketing Communications
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) / UX Design
Information Architecture / Information Systems
Business Administration with focus on eCommerce or Analytics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8 years of progressive experience in web strategy, SEO, UX, or digital consulting roles; agency or in-house experience preferred.

Preferred:

5+ years consulting or agency background with demonstrable results improving traffic, conversions, or revenue.
Proven track record of leading technical audits, migrations, CRO programs, and cross-functional implementations for mid-market to enterprise websites.
Portfolio or case studies demonstrating measurable uplift (organic traffic growth, conversion improvements, reduced page load times).
Experience working with engineering teams in Agile environments and directly reviewing code or technical specifications.