How To Review Your Content When Developing a New Website
Content is often left behind when it comes to developing a new website. It’s easy to get carried away and jump straight into design and build, but if the content that currently exists hasn’t been reviewed, you could start to come across a few problems.
As a digital agency, we’ve experienced certain situations in the past where clients have been unsure about what content needed to be included on their website. If this isn’t dealt with correctly, it can cause numerous issues and result in a vast amount of time being wasted.
So what’s the best way to anticipate any issues with content?
To put it simply, ensure that all content is reviewed at the earliest stage possible. We’ve put together a few steps to consider when reviewing website content:
How much content exists on the current website?
The first step is to define the amount of content that’s on the existing website. Make sure that you’re aware of what’s on there.
This may seem simple, but having an understanding of what you’re working with is vital. From headings, to images, to general text; it all counts.
Complete a content inventory / audit of the existing website
Completing a full content inventory on the website is the next step. By doing this, you’ll be able to see the amount of content spread across the website, whilst also understanding its overall quality. These insights will be ideal for guiding how new content should be written, helping to meet the website’s objectives. A content inventory isn’t just about the written text though, it’ll give you chance to look at the images, videos, navigation and CTAs too.
A content inventory will define how you move your project forward. It’ll help with developing a sitemap as well as answering a few questions that may have arisen throughout the scoping process.
Make sure that any outdated or poor quality content is removed
When redeveloping a website, copying and pasting all of the content from the old website may not be the best decision. If the company’s objectives have changed, the proposition is different, or it’s just very old, replacing this with new content may be a necessity.
Consider the content style and tone
Style and tone is an essential part of how every business communicates. Make sure that the audience is being communicated with in the style that’s required.
Is anybody in particular responsible for overseeing the content throughout the project?
It’s incredibly important to have a member of the team overseeing the content of the new website throughout the project. Whether that’s somebody at your digital agency or somebody managing it client side, content and design need to be working closely together to create the best user experience.
What does Google Analytics say?
Using Google Analytics will help you to evaluate how effective the content is with the target audience. This way you can get a real understanding of how individual pages are performing including the average time spent on a page, the bounce rate and whether visitors are moving on to other pages of the website.
Analytics can really help you define which route to take the content – bin it, adapt it, or leave it.
What next?
Once you’ve worked your way through some of these stages, you should have a much clearer understanding of the content that exists on the website. You’ll have more of an idea of how the website needs to be developed, whether a client or colleague needs educating, and if any further content strategy planning activities need to be considered.
What steps or stages do you go through when reviewing website content? Parallax would love to hear from you. Drop us a line.