Treat Your Website Like an Employee, Not a Brochure
Written By: Jules Flesner
Imagine you had to hire someone to fill this open position at your business.
Managing Director, Business Sustainability
JOB DESCRIPTION
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, you will be engaging with thousands of people. You will greet total strangers as well as familiar faces and our VIP clients warmly and confidently. You will invite everyone inside, and you will stay with them while they explore. You will answer questions from new leads, returning customers, and various other people like vendors and media, immediately as they arise. You will fiercely protect every individual, regardless of location or device, when they share their name, contact information, or financial details, as if our entire business depends on it (because it does).
When anyone is ready to leave, you will assist them towards the exit, and make the entire process of saying goodbye customized and intentional. You will be responsible for sending them off feeling better than when they arrived. Like they now belong to something exclusive, something that will still be there for them for years to come.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Executive-level experience coordinating sales, accounting, finance, technology, operations, HR, and legal functions
The ability to detect what device and screen size that any given person out there in the world might be using, then morph your physical body into entirely different sizes and shapes within a fraction of a second to deliver our company's messages effectively
Working knowledge of banking-grade security and data protection required; bodyguard experience preferred
Familiarity with industry-specific regulations and compliance standards
Demonstrated research, testing, analytics, and forecasting skills
Proven sales experience
The ability to work in-person 24/7, 365 days a year, showing absolutely no signs of burnout with no days off or sick time
You spend years recruiting for this role. You invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in recruitment ads. It works! You find your perfect candidate.
You offer this candidate $2,000. Total. No bonuses or benefits. And you expect their loyalty for the next 3-5 years.
Then you tell them there's no dress code, actually it's fine to show up and stand at the front doors of your company and shake hands with thousands of people in torn clothing covered in dirt. You skip training them. You just accept that some people’s questions will go unanswered, while others will receive tone-deaf or outright wrong information that is (at best) misleading and/or (at worst) non-compliant.
You accept that thousands of potential customers, who you spent so much time and money to attract, will likely leave within three seconds of that handshake, and they’ll never return.
That would be unthinkable in any real hiring scenario.
No serious business owner would knowingly allow a critical employee to fail or harm the business at this scale. And yet this is exactly how many websites are treated in 2026.
At what point did everyone decide that a website was just a glorified, standalone résumé? Or a collection of words and images that someone with only graphic design knowledge or AI tools could handle and maintain? Or that a website is…(*gasp*) optional? This couldn't be further from the truth.
Your website is a living, breathing, executive-level hire. Start acting like it.
Yes, that requires change. And an investment in both time and money. Small business websites in 2026 should at minimum be doing the work of an entire staff member. In midsize and larger firms, they need to carry the workload of multiple staff across departments.
Brand guidelines serve as the dress code. Thoughtful upfront buildout and ongoing site maintenance provide the training this hire needs to meet your demanding 24/7 job requirements.
Hire right, and the payoff is substantial.
Need help with your outdated website practices in 2026? We don’t judge. We’re just here to help you modernize and maximize business income. Reach out to request an intro call.