Web content planning

Tag(s)

Content strategy

Cook(s)

Rebecca Blakiston

Nutrition profile

Plan for your website content with users in mind.

Cooking time

Varies depending on what research is needed. Expect the planning phase to take as long (if not longer) than writing the content itself. Good content takes work. Avoid rushing it.

Perfect for

Thinking through content before you create a new website or web page.

Prep work

Identify a content need, gather information from stakeholders and content providers, and conduct user research to check your assumptions. For example, you might want to:

Outline content goals with colleagues knowledgeable of the topic
Conduct user interviews or usability testing to uncover user needs and pain points
Review web analytics to understand user behavior

If you're planning a larger content project, like an entire website, check out other methods like content inventories for outlining your content architecture and card sorting for creating user-friendly labels and categories.

Ingredients

The basics:

Place to host the content (e.g. website, social media)
Content provider or person who's an expert on the subject
Content publisher who can make the content live
Content manager who will be responsible for keeping content updated

For large organizations and distributed content teams, also consider:

A tool like Gather Content to manage editing and publication workflows
A style guide and voice and tone standards for consistency

Directions

Try adapting this content planning template for your content project.

Define your audience

Identify your audience for the content. Try to be specific, for example:

Job candidates
Grant seekers
New online instructors

Depending on the content, you might have a primary audience and secondary audience. For example, if you are creating a research assignment guide for an anthropology class, you might identify:

Primary audience: students enrolled in ANTH 430 this semester
Secondary audience: librarians helping ANTH students with their research

For more on defining your audience, see personas and empathy maps.

Identify primary questions and tasks

Whenever possible, conduct user research with your audience rather than relying on assumptions. With user research in hand, identify the primary questions the content will answer and primary tasks the content will help users achieve.

For example, the anthropology assignment guide might answer these primary questions:

When is the assignment due?
How many sources do I need?

And the primary tasks might be:

Search for anthropology sources
Submit the assignment

Identify a call to action (optional)

Some content will benefit from a clear call to action. Is there a single, specific action the user will want to take? If so, you'll want this to be clear and obvious as possible. For example:

Register for an event
Book an appointment
Submit a request

Example of a call-to-action button titled "Apply for a room"

Give it a name

If you're creating a website or web page, the name of it is critical to findability. Try using plain language terms that your audience would use to search for the content.

The name of the URL can also be important, and can give the user hints about related content or where the content lives in the information architecture of the website.

Make it findable

Consider how and where users will be looking for the content. Identify primary access point(s) on your website, including where the page lives within the information architecture of your website. For example:

If it is included within global navigation (e.g. drop-down menus, footer)
Where it lives within the page hierarchy (e.g. parent page, child pages)

Assume people will find your content through other sources beyond your website, such as search engines and related organizations. Consider requesting links to your content if appropriate, and customize the description for the content so that it has good search engine optimization. This is often what users will see if they are searching on Google. On a web page, this might be your "metadescription." Also consider an image that represents the content, as this might also display in search results.

Example of a metadescription and representative image appearing as a Google search result

Make it useful

Follow best UX writing practices so your content is useful, understandable, skimmable, relevant, and inclusive. There are whole books on this stuff, but some tips:

Use plain language
Break things apart using semantic headings. Don't use styles (e.g. bold text) to fake headings.
Keep sentences and paragraphs short
Make links meaningful (e.g. "See event details" rather than "click here" or "learn more")

Make it sustainable

Identify who will be keeping the content up to date, any calendar dates where the content will need updating (e.g. end of semester), and if there is an end-of-life where the content should be retired and how that will happen.

Plating

Before publishing the content, consider running a quick usability test or feedback session with potential users or colleagues. For example, to check if the content suits its target audience, you can ask:

Do you think this page answers your questions?
Do you find this page useful? If not, why?

To check if the call-to-actions on the page are clear, ask questions like:

Where would go next from this page?

You can also use feedback from usability testing to help you decide where to put the content and where to link it from, by asking questions such as:

Where would you expect to find this page?

Pro tips

Practice good web writing
Avoid duplicating content that already exists elsewhere
Plan ahead for the lifecycle of the content to avoid content bloat, content rot, and other sticky content problems

Resources

Content planning template (adaptable Word doc)