Questions to ask before updating your website
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The process of developing and launching a new website can be exhausting. It can take months (and sometimes years) to progress through the concept, design, content development, configuration and testing phases before the new site is finally uploaded to the live server. But what happens next?
Often the answer is ‘not much’. The key people on the project move on to the next thing. There might be blog posts and news articles added to the site, but the majority of the pages stay exactly the same until the next redevelopment.
Scheduling regular reviews
How do you know if your content is still relevant? You should be reviewing each page on a regular basis—weekly, monthly or annually depending on the nature of the content—to ensure it is still current and relevant.
In some cases, this might mean making some slight tweaks and changing a few words, or it could be a complete rewrite. Or the information may be no longer relevant and the best course of action is to remove the page altogether. Some content management systems enable you to set a review date to automatically notify you when a page is due for a check-up.
From penthouse to shantytown
Some organisations experience the opposite problem. Content authors keep adding new pages to the site until it becomes bloated and impossible for users to find the information they are seeking.
The website may have started with a comprehensive and carefully considered information architecture (IA) identifying the purpose and position of each page, but as new information is added the logic of this design is forgotten. Soon the website resembles a shantytown, with new pages tacked on wherever with no reference to the overarching structure.
The trick is to allow for the inevitable changes to the site over time while maintaining a cohesive IA that will enable site visitors to find the information they are seeking. This can be challenging for large sites where there might be hundreds of unique pages, but it is all the more important for this very reason.
A few simple questions
Before a new page is added to your website, it needs to justify its existence. Here are some basic questions that should be answered first.
Is this information new, or is it covered by existing content?
Can this information be logically incorporated within an existing page (taking into account search engine optimisation considerations)?
Is there an obvious fit for this content within the existing IA?
If it doesn’t fit with the current IA, what modifications are required?
What implications will this change have for other website pages?
How often should this information be reviewed (e.g. once a month, once a year)?
Does this information have a limited lifespan, after which it can be removed or archived?
