Content on your site

The heart of most websites is the information on them – mostly text. This is the area which is least feasible to outsource and where you have to do most of the work..

Developing pages of text for your site is not just a matter of taking all your brochures and dumping the text online as slabs of text on HTML (web) pages or as PDFs. Content on the web needs rethinking from scratch.

Don’t underestimate the amount of time and work involved in developing good web content.

Don’t leave it to the end, when your site is almost built!

Writing for the web

When US web researcher Jakob Nielsen asks ‘how users read on the web’, his answer is, ‘They don’t’. Instead, users scan pages picking out individual words and phrases.

This means that website writing should be different from conventional writing. Website content should:

• be succinct: no more than half the number of words you would have used in a hardcopy publication
• write for scannability: don't require users to read long continuous blocks of text
• use links to split up long information into multiple pages. Highlight keywords either as links, or with type or colour variations
• structure pages with two or even three levels of headlines (a general page heading plus subheads – and sub-sub-heads when appropriate).
• use clear, meaningful headings and sub-headings not clever or opaque ones
• use bulleted lists
• keep to one idea per paragraph
• use an ‘inverted pyramid‘ style, starting with a short conclusion giving the main point then working back over the subject, rather than the other way around. Keep snapshots or summaries at top level pages then link down to more detail on other pages. This means users will be able to quickly browse content and decide if they want to read more.

More information

Keeping content up-to-date

Visitors to your site will expect accurate and timely information. That expectation will need to be satisfied not just the first time they visit the site, but every single time. One bad experience with inaccurate or out-of-date information and users will think twice about using your site again. At worst, they may seek compensation for receiving the wrong information.

Process for reviewing content

The process you use for reviewing content on your site will depend on the size of your site and your organisation. Identify what content requires updating in your site and determine how often it needs updating or reviewing.

It is a good idea to ensure that every area of information on your site has a ‘content owner’ who is responsible for its reviewing and updating. Normally these content owners will be staff or volunteers in your organisation. Sometimes it makes sense for a small site in a small organisation, to have only one content owner. For other sites it will be more useful to devolve the task among a number of staff.

If you follow the devolved content arrangement, it will still be useful to have a staff member whose role includes that of ‘webmaster’ or coordinator to take overall responsibility for content maintenance and to ensure consistency between various sections of your site.

Updating the content

The content owner who reviews and edits the content should verify the quality and accuracy of any new content.

The webmaster or coordinator of a website can make the job more efficient by establishing some sort of quality assurance process. The process may vary depending on whether you have a content management system (CMS), but think about the following issues:

• the format for the content
• how to indicate requested links
• where in the site the new or revised content is to be placed
• sign-off procedures
• checking for broken links either to other websites. This can be done automatically by software installed on your own computer or installed on the server where your website is hosted.
• confirm that the content supplied for updating does not infringe anyone's copyright or is illegal in any way – e.g. breach of privacy laws.

See also What type of content maintenance program?