Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Website Director

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires a seasoned Website Director to own and accelerate the organization's web presence, driving strategy, governance, content operations, performance, accessibility and conversion across corporate sites and product microsites. The Website Director partners with Marketing, Product, Engineering, Sales and Legal to define a web roadmap, manage CMS and vendor relationships, govern content and taxonomy, and deliver best-in-class digital experiences backed by analytics, SEO, and CRO programs. Ideal candidates combine technical fluency (CMS, front-end, integrations, analytics), product thinking (roadmap, prioritization), strong leadership (team-building, stakeholder management) and a data-driven mindset (A/B testing, GA4, monitoring).

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Web Manager or Web Product Manager
Digital Marketing Manager or Head of Content
UX/Product Designer with web platform ownership

Advancement To:

Head of Digital Experience / Head of Web
VP of Digital Marketing / VP of Product
Chief Digital Officer or Chief Experience Officer

Lateral Moves:

Director of E-commerce
Director of Product Management (Digital Products)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Define and execute a multi-year web strategy and roadmap that aligns with corporate objectives (brand, lead generation, ecommerce, retention), prioritizes initiatives by business impact and ROI, and balances technical debt, performance and growth experiments.
Own end-to-end website governance including content strategy, taxonomy, editorial workflow, legal/compliance review, SEO/content quality, and publishing SLAs to ensure consistent brand and UX across all properties.
Manage and optimize the enterprise CMS (e.g., Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, WordPress) strategy and operations — including release planning, component libraries, templates, content models, and authoring best practices.
Lead cross-functional product-style delivery for major web initiatives: define requirements, prioritize backlogs, coordinate sprints with engineering, QA and UX, and ensure on-time, on-budget launches.
Build and lead a high-performing web team (product owners, content strategists, UX designers, front-end engineers, QA and SEO specialists), including hiring, mentoring, performance reviews and career development.
Establish and own web KPIs (traffic, engagement, conversion, funnel metrics, LTV attribution) and deliver weekly/monthly executive reporting that translates analytics into prioritized actions.
Implement and run a continuous experimentation program (A/B and multivariate testing) using Optimizely, VWO or native platform tools to lift conversion and engagement while institutionalizing learnings.
Drive SEO strategy — technical SEO, content optimization, site architecture, metadata governance and structured data — to increase organic visibility and reduce paid acquisition costs.
Oversee web analytics and data infrastructure (GA4, BigQuery, data layers, GTM) to ensure accurate tracking, event taxonomy, conversion attribution and reporting for all web properties.
Lead web performance optimization (page load, Core Web Vitals, caching, image optimization, CDN strategy) in partnership with engineering and platform teams to improve UX and SEO.
Ensure web accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA) across templates, components and content; partner with legal and UX to implement remediation plans, testing and training.
Own vendor and agency relationships: RFPs, contract negotiation, SLAs, scope governance and vendor performance review for CMS partners, hosting/CDN, design agencies and CRO vendors.
Coordinate complex integrations between the website and backend systems (CRM, marketing automation, commerce platforms, payment gateways, APIs) to enable personalization and reliable data flows.
Lead large-scale web migrations and redesigns (platform upgrades, brand refresh, domain consolidations), including technical planning, content migration strategy, SEO preservation and stakeholder communications.
Develop and manage the web budget, resource allocation and cost optimization strategies, including licensing, hosting, third-party tools and contractor spend.
Create and operationalize content governance, editorial calendars and global localization workflows, ensuring timely, accurate multi-region publishing and consistency across markets.
Drive personalization and segmentation initiatives (server/client-side personalization, recommendation engines) to increase relevance and conversion across visitor cohorts.
Act as the primary escalation point for site incidents, uptime and security events; coordinate incident response, root cause analysis and preventative mitigation plans with IT/security teams.
Evangelize customer-centric web standards across the organization, running training, governance committees and process improvements to increase adoption of web best practices.
Partner with Marketing and Sales to align web initiatives with demand generation, paid media, and lead management to maximize pipeline impact and attribution clarity.
Lead stakeholder communications and executive presentations, translating technical trade-offs and website metrics into business outcomes and investment recommendations.
Implement content experiments (messaging, CTA placement, page layout) and rigorous QA processes for both desktop and mobile-first experiences to reduce friction across conversion funnels.
Maintain a consolidated roadmap and backlog with prioritization frameworks (RICE, ICE, value vs complexity) to ensure transparency and stakeholder alignment across global teams.
Ensure privacy and data governance compliance for tracking, cookies and consent management in collaboration with legal and privacy teams across international territories.
Drive continuous improvement through post-launch retrospectives, KPI-driven iterations, and a culture of measurement that closes the loop between insights and product changes.

Secondary Functions

Serve as a subject matter expert on web trends, emerging platforms (headless CMS, Jamstack), and competitor benchmarking to define opportunistic experiments and platform initiatives.
Support ad-hoc cross-functional analytics requests and collaborate with BI teams to answer funnel, attribution and cohort questions that inform product and marketing decisions.
Mentor direct reports on stakeholder management, vendor selection, technical requirements, and career development to grow internal capability and succession.
Facilitate regular governance forums (web council) to manage global change requests, template updates and brand controls across distributed teams.
Contribute to RFPs, vendor evaluations and POC testing for new digital experience and optimization tools to ensure best-fit technology investments.
Coordinate localization and translation reviews with regional leads to ensure culturally relevant content while maintaining global brand consistency.
Produce executive-ready dashboards, site health reports and sprint summaries that include remediation plans and resource implications.
Participate in security and compliance audits related to web applications and third-party integrations; coordinate remediation and validation activities.
Partner with Product and Engineering to define API contracts and data schemas that support scalable personalization, search and recommendation features.
Maintain knowledge base articles and run periodic training sessions for content authors on CMS workflows, SEO basics, and accessibility requirements.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Enterprise CMS administration and architecture (Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, WordPress, Sitecore, or headless CMS patterns).
Web analytics and data infrastructure: GA4, Google Tag Manager, BigQuery, dataLayer best practices and event tracking taxonomy design.
Technical SEO: crawlability, XML sitemaps, redirects, canonicalization, structured data (Schema.org) and on-page optimization.
A/B and experimentation platforms: Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize (or equivalent) and statistical significance interpretation.
Front-end fundamentals: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and familiarity with responsive/mobile-first design and frameworks.
Performance optimization: Core Web Vitals, lazy loading, image optimization, CDN configuration and caching strategies.
Accessibility standards and testing: WCAG 2.1 AA, ARIA, screen reader testing and remediation workflows.
Integrations and APIs: CRM (Salesforce), marketing automation (Marketo, HubSpot), commerce platforms (Shopify, Magento), and RESTful APIs.
Tag management and consent: Google Tag Manager implementation and consent management platforms (CMPs) for privacy compliance.
Project and product management: backlog grooming, sprint planning, roadmap prioritization and use of Agile tools (Jira, Asana, Trello).
SQL and data querying for ad-hoc analytics or working with BI teams to validate metrics.
Experience with CDN, hosting platforms and cloud services (AWS, Azure) and familiarity with web security best practices.
Conversion rate optimization methodologies and tools for funnel analysis and design iteration.
Version control basics (Git) and CI/CD deployment concepts for web releases.
Experience managing vendor contracts, SLAs and third-party platform licensing.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinker with strong business acumen and the ability to translate web metrics into revenue and retention-focused actions.
Exceptional stakeholder management and cross-functional influencing skills with senior leaders across Marketing, Product and Engineering.
Strong communicator and presenter; able to craft executive summaries and technical roadmaps for varied audiences.
Data-driven decision maker who balances quantitative insight with user-centered qualitative research.
Coaching and people leadership: hire, develop and retain multidisciplinary teams in a fast-paced environment.
Problem-solving orientation and calm decision-making during site incidents and high-pressure launches.
Prioritization skills and the ability to manage competing requests using clear frameworks and transparent trade-offs.
Continuous improvement mindset with curiosity for emerging web technologies and best practices.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Digital Media, Marketing, Communications, Information Systems or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (MBA, MS in Human-Computer Interaction, Digital Marketing, or related discipline) or equivalent professional certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Digital Marketing / Communications
Human-Computer Interaction / UX Design
Information Systems / Business Administration

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

8+ years in digital/web roles with at least 3–5 years managing cross-functional teams and owning web platform strategy.

Preferred:

10+ years of progressive web/product leadership experience, including ownership of enterprise CMS, complex integrations, SEO/CRO programs and P&L or budget responsibility.