Content strategy to help develop clear and user-friendly websites

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‘Content is king.’ Yet often websites contain information that is irrelevant, out-of-date and unreadable. It is only with a defined content strategy that organisations can give users the content that they want and need – content that is clear and user-friendly, and that complies with laws and regulations.

The problem

A provincial government had a website that was so large that it could not count the pages. It was about to migrate to a new content management system and wanted to simplify the content at the same time.

The solution

Simplified worked with the website team, other stakeholders and its own network of experts to:

  • develop guidelines on how to decide what content to keep and what content to delete. Our recommendation would result in over a third of pages being removed from the site
  • give a clear set of recommendations on translation
  • develop workflow guides on how to write, review, update, translate and publish content efficiently and in line with laws and regulations
  • create a framework for governing website content for quality and writing in plain language
  • ensure that content is fairly balanced between internal and external needs
  • recommend a set of content templates that would be appropriate to the content management system migration
  • write a set of prototype pages in plain English.

The results

A documented content strategy that provides a clear direction for how to deliver useful and usable content to citizens and government partners.