In the process of an all-day planning session with some clients on Friday, we visited one of their web sites and found, in the main box, a promotion for an event that had taken place a week earlier. All of us, including the president of the company, were a little surprised that it was still up, particularly since it was in a prominent place. The person who has been overseeing the sites (they have a bunch) said that he had asked that it be changed a few days back but apparently his request had gone unfulfilled.
As we discussed the situation, it was pretty obvious that there were multiple failures. The first one was by the person who is in charge of the site in failing to keep the site up to date and relevant. That shows a huge disrespect for your audience and yourself, in my opinion. Most content management systems have some sort of start and end date for every piece of content – it’s not all that difficult to be sure that time-sensitive materials change at an appropriate time. More importantly, why would you make yourself and the company you represent look stupid, insensitive, out of touch – you can pick any of a hundred words.
The second failure was by the person overseeing all of the sites. He neglected to set standards and see that they were met. He also neglected to step in to correct the situation as best he could (more about that in a second) by explaining to the site manager that out of date materials turn off readers and might cause them to go elsewhere for more timely information. He also didn’t go to her direct management for help (she reports locally, he is a divisional person). Lastly, he didn’t turn to his management and alert them to a problem.
The third failure was by the top management. They never empowered the fellow overseeing the sites properly. The gave him responsibility without authority, which I believe is a recipe for failure. They also didn’t make his mission 100% clear to him either – he thought his role was more advisory than supervisory (hey – what are you – a consultant?!?!).
It’s good this happened before we make a major upgrade in their sites and do quite a bit to grow their traffic. The lines of authority (and responsibility – equally as important) are clear now. Materials will change on time and people understand the standards. And we all had good weekends!
Consult Keith 
