*** These slides accompany a talk given at WordCamp Kansas City on June 11, 2016. *** Revamping the design of a website can be a fun and exciting project. Hopefully, the result is a prettier and more user-friendly site. But don’t forget about content! It’s easy to be consumed by theme design and features while overlooking the impact of a content review on the success of your website redesign. I’ll share best practices for good website content, audits, and page rewrites while handling the challenges of simultaneous design and text overhauls. This talk is aimed at webmasters, small business owners, web developers, or anyone interested in tips for effective copywriting, information hierarchy, and project management.

1. 1
The Great Dis-Content
Tackling Content in a Website Redesign

2. 2
ANDREA ZOELLNER
EDITORIAL AND WEB CONSULTANT
@andreazoellner
www.andreazoellner.com

3. 3
User Perspective Business Perspective
What a user sees,
reads, learns,
experiences,
remembers, and
maybe even shares
(if you’re lucky).
WHAT IS CONTENT?
Critical information the
website, application,
intranet, or any other
delivery vehicle was
created to contain or
communicate.
- Content Strategy for the Web,
Halverson, Rach, 2012

4. 4
Text
Video
Including the transcripts,
captions, descriptions, titles,
and annotations.
Animations
Sometimes a combo of text,
images, sound…
Microcopy
Button or navigation copy,
tags, urls, metadata.
Images
WHAT IS WEB CONTENT?
No, but really.
Articles, product descriptions,
social media posts, web text,
captions, pop ups, links.
Don’t forget alt tags and
descriptions.

5. 5
Supports key objectives
Well-written and engaging
Well-organized and intuitive
Supports user’s needs
Irrelevant or redundant
Overwritten
Hard to find
Broken or inaccurate
Good content Bad content
CONTENT
Your business needs it, your users want it.

6. 6
WHY IS CONTENT SO HARD?
Time consuming
Resource
consuming
Requires ownership
Political
Overwhelming

7. 7
Decision makers don’t want to
spend time, money, or effort on
good content.
Content is commodified, produced as a
by-product of daily tasks or on the cheap.
Bad content is shipped with the promise of
“revisiting it later” when we have the time,
money, and resources.
Content is created without a strategy and
nobody is happy.
CRAPPY CONTENT
A vicious cycle

8. 8
www.louistwelve.com
WHY IS CONTENT still SO HARD?
“I don’t have time to make it better”
“I’m not sure what we need”
“The demands for content are non-stop”
“I don’t know how to create good content”
“I don’t have anyone to create it”
“No one is in charge of content”
“Content requests get stuck in bottlenecks”

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We forget content can get
political.
We treat content like a commodity.
We don’t take the time to
make a plan.
We assume everyone is on the
same page.
COMMON CONTENT BREAKDOWNS
Where things stop working

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WE TREAT CONTENT LIKE A COMMODITY
▪ Rely on automatic content aggregation (algorithms, RSS feeds, syndication)
▪ Create as much content as possible
▪ Get users to generated content
▪ Sacrifice quality for price
Content requires real people and real resources.
Content that works for your business and matters to your users is not a commodity.

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WE DON’T TAKE THE TIME TO MAKE A PLAN
▪ Creating content just because you can
▪ Buckling under the pressure to deliver, now
▪ Wanting to have something to show your boss, now
▪ Not stopping to ask questions

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WE ASSUME EVERYONE IS ON THE SAME PAGE
Nobody likes to have extra work sprung on them.
Make sure you are communicating your plans throughout
the whole process. Agree on the scope and expectations so
no one is caught off guard.
Content creation is more like running a bakery than baking
a cake.

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LIFECYCLE
Expectation
1. CONCEPT 2. CREATE 3. REVISE 4. APPROVE

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LIFECYCLE
AUDIT
RESEARCH
STRATEGIZE
BENCHMARK
ANALYZE
PLAN DEFINE
CATEGORIZE
CREATE
ROUTE
REVISE
APPROVE
TEST
FORMAT
TAG
PUBLISH
EVALUATE
ARCHIVE
UPDATE
STRUCTURE
Reality
- Content Strategy for the Web,
Halverson, Rach, 2012

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WE FORGET CONTENT CAN GET POLITICAL
▪ The information architect had a vision that is getting derailed
▪ Marketing needs to ensure brand alignment and messaging
▪ Business or product owners don’t agree with the messaging
▪ Legal is pushing the disclaimer that has to be there by law
▪ The CMS team needs at least 2 months to integrate all the changes

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IF THEY PRIORITIZE AND NEGLECT THE RISKS ARE
Business
- budget/ROI
- schedule
- deliverables
- UX
- actual time to
develop
- project risks
- content doesn’t meet user needs
- missed deadlines and delays
Marketing
- promoting key features
- SEO
- tracking/cookies/pixels
- audience’s priorities
- customer-facing copy
- maintenance post-
launch
- content is more promotional than
educational
- writing suffers from “marketing speak”
- content is launched then neglected
Advertising
- campaign-driven
creative
- interactive features
- latest technology
- usability
- existing content
- CMS restrictions or
requirements
- content is more flash than substance
- content is delivered in animation or
graphics that can’t be measured or
indexed
CHART OF PRIORITIES
Every organizational unit has an impact

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IF THEY PRIORITIZE AND NEGLECT THE RISKS ARE
UX
- audience needs and
desires
- research
- visual design
- current state content
analysis
- SEO considerations
- planning for content
- business content objectives are
overlooked or marginalized
- desired content can’t be completed by
project launch date due to lack of
source material, time, or budget
IT
- CMS or dev
requirements
- production workflow
- people involved in the
content creation process
- brand and messaging
- content may be published with a “fix-
it-later” plan.
- final published content may not
adhere to visual or editorial brand
standards
CHART OF PRIORITIES (con’t)
Every organizational unit has an impact
- Content Strategy for the Web,
Halverson, Rach, 2012

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A website redesign
is an opportunity to stop,
take inventory,
develop a strategy, and
create better content.

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CONTENT FIRST?
“
One of the biggest and best side effects of content
strategy’s activities is that it’s encouraging agencies to
reorder their design process. It’s no longer: discovery,
information architecture, design, templates and
development. Instead we’re doing: content strategy,
information architecture, web writing, content
production, design, templates, and development.
- Tiffani Jones Brown

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They deserve to have a
great website
experience.
YOUR USERS DESERVE BETTER
Content is a key part of
what your brand is
communicating, make it
count.
YOUR COMPETITORS
ARE BETTER AT IT
Good content will help
you achieve your goals
and streamline cross-
company efforts.
STRATEGY WILL MAKE
YOU MORE EFFICIENT
Good content will
increase your reach,
conversions, and save
you money.
THE NUMBERS SAY IT ALL
WHY SPEND TIME ON CONTENT?
Let’s make a case

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Plan
Audit
Win
Strategize
Align
TAKE ACTION
Think big, start small
Create
great
content

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Create
great
content

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WORKFLOW
GOVERNANCE
SUBSTANCE
STRUCTURE
HOW DOES CONTENT STRATEGY WORK?
Brain Traffic, 2010
CONTENT COMPONENTS PEOPLE COMPONENTS
Core
Strategy

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Create
great
content

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Content strategy
works around,
between, &
inclusively of other
disciplines.
02
0306
01
05 04
WEB WRITING
INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE
SEO
MESSAGING AND
BRANDING
CMS
METADATA
CONTENT STRATEGY
AND OTHER DISCIPLINES

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GATHER A TEAM
▪ Identify your stakeholders
▪ Convince them to participate
▪ Set the stage for alignment with a kickoff
▪ Get them engaged
▪ Keep them motivated

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STRATEGIC DECISION
MAKERS
MONEY PEOPLE
CHAMPIONS
SHOW STOPPERS
TYPES OF STAKEHOLDERS
Build your team
INTERESTED OTHERS

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Create
great
content

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Choose your type of audit
Audit
Tabulate your findings
Create a report
FOUR STEPS OF CONTENT AUDITS

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Quantitative
inventory
Qualitative Audit: Best
practices assessment
3 TYPES OF AUDITS
Qualitative audit:
Strategic assessment

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QUANTITATIVE INVENTORY: JUST THE FACTS
Quickest and easiest way to get a sense of the quantity of content and
channels. Use technical tools on your WordPress backend like the
WordPress plugin Content Audit to help you gather this data.
▪ ID
▪ Title/Topics
▪ URL
▪ Format
▪ Source
▪ Technical home
▪ Metadata
▪ Traffic stats
▪ Last update
▪ Language

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QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENTS
Best practices assessment:
Does my content follow
industry best practices and
meet my users’ needs?
Strategic assessment:
How does my content
align with my strategy?
What needs to change?

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Knowledge
level
Findability
Audience
Accuracy
Actionability
Usability
CHOOSE YOUR OWN FACTORS
And the appropriate scale/measure

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01 02 03
MESSAGE BUSINESS
VALUE
BRAND/TONE
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT FACTORS

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A NOTE ABOUT SPREADSHEETS
The basic spreadsheet Spreadsheet 2.0 Indexed Inventory

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CONTENT SAMPLING
What do you want to learn?
▪ Content objectives
▪ User groups
▪ Traffic
▪ Content ownership
▪ Maintenance frequency
▪ Depth
Look at enough content to see patterns emerge and answer your questions.
The “representative sampling”
Brain Traffic, 2010

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Overview of the process
Goals, factors,
measurement, scope
Path to raw data
Some people might
be interested, you
never know
Next steps
Results and
recommendations
Findings
Formal report,
summary, or charts
YOUR AUDIT REPORT
01
02
03
04

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Create
great
content

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Target audience
Messaging
Channels
Workflow and
governance
FACTORS OF INFLUENCE
Internal factors
When internal analysis is ignored or out of date, entire strategies are built on un-researched
assumptions and isolated opinions—costing everyone time and money.
- Content Strategy for the Web,
Halverson, Rach, 2012

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Users
Competition
Power players
Current events
FACTORS OF INFLUENCE
External factors

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WORKFLOW
GOVERNANCE
SUBSTANCE
STRUCTURE
BUILD YOUR STRATEGY
Brain Traffic, 2010
CONTENT COMPONENTS PEOPLE COMPONENTS
Core
Strategy

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ASPIRATIONAL
FLEXIBLE
MOTIVATIONAL
INCLUSIVE
MEMORABLE
YOUR CORE STRATEGY

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SUBSTANCECONTENT COMPONENTS
▪ Audience: Who are they? Who are your users? How do they rank?
▪ Messaging: What do you want them to remember? Is there a hierarchy in messages?
▪ Topics: Audience + Messaging = Topics
▪ Purpose: Every piece of content needs a job. Is it to persuade, inform, validate, instruct,
entertain?
▪ Voice and Tone: What’s your voice, tone, cultural factors to take into consideration?
▪ Source: Will you use original content, co-created content, aggregated content, curated
content, user-generated?

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STRUCTURECONTENT COMPONENTS
▪ Channels: Where you are communication your content (email, websites)
▪ Platform: Technology upon which you build your content or service (CMS, App)
▪ Format: The medium used (text, video, images)
▪ Navigation: What structure and nomenclature will you adopt? Be intentional and consistent.
▪ Links: Decide on a format and make it clear and compelling.
▪ Microcopy: Partner with UX to decide on alert, button, and instructional copy.
▪ Metadata and tagging: Is it accurate, consistent, and help to organize content?
Where are your audiences? Which format communicates best? How shareable does the content need to be?
Don’t waste time delivering content where your audiences don’t actually want you to be.

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CMS/IT
BRAND/
MARKETING
UX/WEB
STRATEGY
PRODUCT/SUBJECT
EXPERTS
DEFINING OWNERSHIP
CONTENT
STRATEGY
PEOPLE COMPONENTS

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▪ Style Guide
▪ Content planning and
priority matrix
▪ Voice and tone guidelines
▪ Product trademark specs
▪ Web writing best practices
▪ Meeting guide
HELPFUL TOOLSPEOPLE COMPONENTS
▪ Editorial calendars
▪ Content requirement
checklist
▪ Curation/aggregation
checklist
▪ Migration spreadsheet
▪ Content inventory
▪ Content maintenance checklist
▪ Content maintenance log
▪ Qualitative audit spreadsheet
and report
▪ Measurement scorecards
▪ Measurement history
Style Maintenance
Creation

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Create
great
content

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THANK YOU!
@andreazoellner
www.andreazoellner.com