Stewarding Your Site

Woman working at her desktop PC.

Most people underestimate the time and effort needed to keep a website operating efficiently. Stewarding a website means that you carefully and responsibly manage the site, keeping pages fresh and making sure that a site continues to meet users' needs. To make the concept of long-term stewardship more manageable, focus your efforts on four key areas: “Planning,” “Analytics,” “Strategy” and “Team.”

  • Planning
    2/16/17
    You should plan for stewardship before your website goes live. A good plan identifies who will be in charge of stewarding each area of your site, as well as how often pages, facts and stories should be updated.
  • Usage
    2/15/22
    A good steward uses website statistics, called “analytics,” to understand how visitors are using a site. Are people viewing content and clicking on links? Analytics can help determine what’s working on your site – and how you can improve.
  • Strategy
    3/26/19
    Each member of your Web team should understand the business strategy of your site and work to ensure that any updates align with that strategy.
  • Team
    10/16/24
    As you move from building to stewarding your website, the make-up of your Web team will change. Key team members who help steward of a website include the Site Owner, Site Manager, Content Owner and Web Strategist.