A website redesign can be a big, career-defining project for many content folk. It’s a golden opportunity to fix all the things we know are broken, lay solid foundations for better content, and make our mark with something high-profile.
The scale is big, too. A project of this size and complexity might not come along that often in many content roles. Even for a relatively small website (although it’s hard to quantify and compare website sizes – page numbers don’t tell the true story) a redesign is a significant thing.
Redesigns are emotional, too. There’s hope, excitement, a sense of possibility. Content will be better after this! We can fix that thing that’s been bugging us! But there’s also pressure and fear. We don’t have time for this. What if something goes wrong, or the site breaks, or users hate it? Is this really the best use of our budget?
So I thought I’d share some advice to help content teams navigate website redesigns. It’s not a comprehensive guide to doing a redesign, but rather some prompts to help you think about the content side of the project.
Understand the scope and intention
‘To many ears, ‘redesign’ puts an aesthetic and visual frame around the work, when what you likely actually have is an information architecture, content strategy, accessibility, SEO, user experience, authoring experience, content operations, or even branding problem. (Or all of them together.) Fixes to those kinds of problems are not implied by the word redesign. This is a red-alert, all-hands-on-deck, five-alarm frickin’ danger. It is entirely possible and sadly common for companies to completely redesign their websites while improving nothing with respect to the user experience or business value of said website. Which you certainly don’t want to do.’ Old business problems in new design templates, Scott Kubie
As Scott Kubie expresses so perfectly, some redesigns don’t go beyond surface level. There’s often magical thinking going on, that refreshing the visual side of things will somehow change everything.
If you’re feeling up for a challenge, this is a good time to ask a lot of questions about the scope and intention of the project. You might also want to try to use your influence to make sure the redesign is going to be meaningful and worth the investment.
If it’s ‘just’ a visual redesign and you can’t influence that, take a deep breath, shake it off, and find something else to focus on that’s in your circle of control.
If it’s a redesign that aims to have a significant impact on user experience and business value, then it’s time to make sure you’re going to be involved in the right parts of the project.
Clarify — and fight for — your role in the redesign
At the first whisper of a redesign, start making your case for how you want to be involved.
I’ve seen so many projects where the content team isn’t brought in until the final stages. At which point you’re asked to play copy Tetris and fit the old content into the new site structure and templates, and find out that you’re stuck with a ‘News and blog’ section that you have no use for.
Content leaders should be a key stakeholder, decision-maker, and contributor to almost every part of a redesign project. If there’s a steering committee, content should be part of it. Content should be closely involved in — if not responsible for — the information architecture. The content strategy should inform the whole project. The page designs should reflect the content model. Content should have a say in the choice of CMS. Work with whoever is accountable for the project to help them see why and how you need to be involved.
Share, refresh, or define your content strategy
As I mentioned before, your content strategy should inform the redesign.
If you have one, share it so that it can be a part of the foundation for the project. If changes to your organisation’s strategy are the reason for the redesign, you might need to refresh your strategy to fit. And if you don’t have a strategy, it’s time to define one. As a starting point, develop a clear articulation of:
- Substance. The kinds of content you’ll create and the messages it’ll share, including:
- Topics: The subject matter your content will cover
- Content types: The different kinds and formats of content you’ll create
- Sources: Where you’re going to get your content from
- Governance. How you make and communicate decisions about content, including:
- Policies: The big ideas or pillars at the heart of your content strategy
- Principles: The ideals and ways of working you want to uphold
Think about how much time you need (and how to protect it)
A redesign can take up a lot of your time. As well as pre-work like refining your content strategy or carrying out a content audit, and design work like information architecture and content modelling, there’s content creation, editing, and population to think about too.
It’s a good idea to estimate the time required. Once you have that, you can think about if/how you can balance this alongside your ‘business as usual’ work, or whether you need additional time and resources. It can be really helpful to get permission or agreement that working on the redesign is the priority, and that you can put other work on hold.
Do a content audit
Lots of steps in your website redesign will be easier if you know:
- What content you have on your website
- How it’s performing
- How it aligns with the organisation’s strategy
- How well it meets user needs
Running a content audit will give you all this, and help you think about where the gaps are, what to delete, merge, update, keep, and so on. A content audit can help inform your content strategy, too, by highlighting challenges and opportunities.
Some people advise to just start from scratch and forget the old site. But unless it’s irredeemably awful, I don’t subscribe to this approach. Content takes so much time and money to produce, so you should get as much value from it as you can. Even if you need to rewrite or restructure it, you can probably still use a lot of your existing content in some shape or form.
Engage stakeholders, content owners, subject matter experts
If you’re about to embark on rewriting, updating, or creating content, you need your stakeholders, content owners, and subject matter experts to be engaged.
A good step to get started with is creating a RACI matrix. This shows who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed about different areas of content. Make it granular and specific. This content owner needs to be consulted about this content type. This subject matter expert is accountable for the accuracy of this section of the website. Without this, you can end up dealing with too much feedback and too many opinions that don’t really count.
I’d also suggest thinking about how you’ll keep your stakeholders informed about your progress and the decisions you’ve made.
Focus on information architecture
Designing an information architecture (IA) means thinking about how content is organised, labelled, and structured on your website.
It’s not the same as creating a sitemap or designing navigation. It’s about making sense of the information your organisation needs to provide to users and coming up with a structure and language that translates that to a website. I think content teams are well placed to lead or contribute to IA, because we’re so familiar with making meaning.
An IA should be designed based on a solid understanding of:
- The domain area of the organisation, the subject matter areas you work in, your products, services, offering, activities
- What users will need your website for
- The kinds of content you’re going to create
That final point is key for content teams to get to contribute to. There needs to be a home in the IA for the content types you’re going to create. To go back to an example I used earlier, an IA where a blog’s been chucked in as a home for ‘content’ is no good to you if your content strategy is based on evergreen information and advice that won’t work in a dated, ephemeral format.
Design content first and create a content model
This might be controversial, but I firmly believe that redesigns should be content first.
Imagine you’ve been briefed to design a container to carry ‘food’. You’d want to know what that food is first, right? Is it soup or a sandwich, hot or cold, one portion or 10? You could design a one-size-fits-all bucket, but it won’t do a great job. Content is the same. Function should come before form.
Content modelling is a great tool for approaching a redesign in a content-first way. A content model is a diagram and/or a spreadsheet. It lists all the different content types you have, and breaks each of those content types down to give you a list of the individual attributes or elements it’s made of. It also maps out how those elements relate to each other. It’s an ideal artefact for connecting content, UX, design, and development.
Plan to edit and create a lot of content
This might go without saying, but just in case: You’re going to need to edit and create a lot of content. And even if you think you’ve got a clear idea, it might still be more than you think. It’s a really common thing to underestimate.
Use your IA and content audit to create an inventory for the new site. That way you can map out all the new pages, what content type they will use, and whether they are based on existing content, or need to be created from scratch. You can also turn this into a tracker to show how your content is progressing through the redesign cycle.
Remember to prioritise too. For example, there might be low-priority content that you can migrate to the new site and fix later (or maybe never, let’s be realistic). And delete as much as you can.
Templates and checklists can help smooth the writing process. As can nailing your messaging, so that you’re not aiming for a moving target in terms of describing what your organisation is and does.
Celebrate – but don’t think that this is the end
There’s been more than one occasion where I have cried on website relaunch day. Because I was tired, stressed, and being overly hard on myself about the end product. In retrospect, I wish I’d celebrated. Because even if it wasn’t perfect, it was still a big moment.
So that’s my final bit of advice. Mark the occasion, bake a cake, go out to lunch, pop a bottle, get the team together, and acknowledge this huge thing you’ve achieved.
But you also need to remember that this isn’t the finish line. It’s just the start. A website is never done. You need to add to it, iterate it, improve it, finesse it, work on the governance, processes, operations behind the scenes. Otherwise you’ll be doing it again in 5 years time. Big redesigns aren’t a necessity. If you’re always refining to meet organisational changes and user needs, the site can grow with you.
Reading list and resources
- Old business problems in new design templates, Scott Kubie
- Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach
- Content strategy: the back to basics guide, Lauren Pope
- How to do a content audit, Lauren Pope
- RACI Chart: What is it and how to use, Atlassian
- IA for everybody: free IA Course, Abby Covert
- Content modelling and structured content: the basics, Lauren Pope
Thanks so much for reading. If you need support with a redesign, I’d love to talk. Get in touch.
