Planning web site content can have so many details that it’s easy to get lost in them. It shouldn’t be this way.
Focus on these high-level points when planning your web site content include:
1. Knowing your boss, and not just your audience.
Knowing the audience for your web site is important. Knowing your web site’s sponsors, or the managers who must approve it before it is launched, is equally important.
Web site writing is no different than any other type of writing in that everyone has his or her own views as to what works best. The audience, obviously, has the final say because it will choose to revisit the site, or possibly purchase your product or service through the web site.
If you are not the final approver of your site, you must seek and encourage feedback from those who have that authority. What do managers want visitors to get when they visit the web site? Seek and encourage this feedback throughout your development process. In this way, you encourage collaboration with and support of those managers.
2. Knowing that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
A fresh start. A clean break with the past. Time to put a new stamp on things. When given the assignment to redesign a web site, these things are often the first things said.
Adding and updating information, changing the content design, improving the site’s navigation, making it mobile friendly—all are good examples towards the “fresh start.” These are important goals to reach.
Yet some web site goals don’t change. You still want your site to be accurate, current, helpful, and easy to navigate. You still want it to be useful. You still want it to be at its best. The basic goal, therefore, isn’t so much a clean break with the past as it is about how can you improve what you have.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to get there. Look at your competitors’ web sites. Identify what you like and dislike about them. Knowing these things can help you better visualize how to make your web site stand out from the crowd.
3. Knowing that the beat goes on.
One joy of writing digital content is the ease in which you can improve or delete it. Of course, along with the privilege of quick turnaround comes the responsibility of almost constant turnaround. Nothing is static. Improvements can be made immediately, and are. Therefore, your web site content plan must also be kept up to date.
Consider these points when planning (or updating) your web site content.
