How much does your website cost? Part three

7 May 2011

Lessons from the UK government’s spending review – and content strategy   

Overview of this three-part post   

Part three: How content strategy can help reduce costs

Extra ways of making websites and intranets more cost effective    

by Diana Railton    

The UK government is radically changing how it goes about digital publishing.  

In rationalising its websites, it is involved in a huge exercise in user-centred design and, in effect, content strategy.   

Applying extra insights from content strategy will be useful to all government departments – and to any organisation managing a website or intranet. 

What is content strategy – and how does it fit in?  

• a plan for creating, delivering and governing useful, usable web content – with specific measurable outcomes

It’s also:

• a rationale for providing content through the most appropriate channels
• a repeatable system that manages your content throughout its lifecycle

As an integral part of digital and website strategy, content strategy is developing fast as a discipline. Gone are the days when content was simply an after-thought behind web design and technology. Now it’s taking centre stage at the planning table. 

Content strategists all over the world, with different backgrounds, are sharing their work to show how much it has to offer. And a UK Content Strategy Association is in the making.

Content strategy, done well, ‘cuts costs by reducing redundant or extraneous publishing efforts, while increasing the effectiveness of existing assets’, writes Erin Kissane in her recent book Elements of Content Strategy.   

Cost categories    

The UK government’s Central Office of Information (COI) uses five categories to list website costs. Content strategy can help bring about long-term savings in each category, starting of course with Strategy and planning.     

In agreeing content goals, content strategy focuses first on an organisation’s business and communication objectives. As COI recommends under delivery of site objectives: ‘Website managers should be clear what they want from each website and set specific, measurable, timed objectives. These should be translated into a set of key performance indicators which are monitored in a systematic way.’   

Content strategy involves communication planning before web design. And it continues to takes care of content once a website is up and running.  

Much of COI’s Design and build cost category depends on a clear content brief – from information architecture and wireframes to ‘components’ such as blogs and wikis. 

Essential to content planning is a full understanding of the needs of target audiences, and their tasks on the site. It’s surprising how often these are overlooked. Many sites are uselessly organisation centric.  

In drawing up a content strategy road map, you need to consider everything to get from A to B. 

Content audits 

Do you know how much content your website or intranet contains? As sites expand, it’s easy to lose track of everything on them. Only by collating this can you audit a site thoroughly.    

Drawing up a content inventory can be daunting and surprising – people have likened it to revisiting attics or storerooms. Some convent inventories show many thousands of  ‘pages’.    

Based on the content inventory, a qualitative audit will show what state the content’s in and what you should do about it. ‘Kill or cure’ was a policy initially recommended to the government ‘to reduce poorly performing content and remove the long tail of content no-one uses’.    

Content strategists have refined a variety of tools for assessing and classifying content, as part of the content lifecycle.  

The bottom line is that content costs money to create and manage. Less content = less costs and usually happier users.   

Content provision   

Content strategy models show a repeatable system, such as: analyse → plan → create → govern.   

COI’s cost category on Content provision covers both creating and governing content.  

Quality content depends on pre-set standards that everyone fully understands and agrees on. COI guidelines on editorial quality emphasise that ‘content should be up to date, easy to understand, appropriate in tone and consistent’.   

Government websites must now carry out regular user satisfaction surveys. These test users’ perceptions of some of the standards. They are asked, for example, to rate the site on aspects like:   

• information is clear and easy to understand
• accurate and up to date information

I query asking users, rather than content providers, to judge the second of these.  

Reducing costs through content governance    

Content governance is a way of managing the work and time of content teams efficiently. It can reduce costs while ensuring content meets the right standards and objectives.   

Writing about content governance for US government websites, Natalya Minkovsky points out: ‘When it comes to governance models and policies, the government has a head start on many other organizations. For government … it’s second nature to plan ahead, establish protocols, and create workflows.’   

COI’s pioneering work in the UK supports this. Another of its sound recommendations is that ‘All websites should have a clear written strategy which includes details on who can contribute and approve content. All content should be monitored and assessed against clear editorial guidelines to include monitoring search terms to inform editorial policy.’   

Content providers’ time 

In measuring staff costs, COI acknowledges that the time of content providers is one of the hardest to assess.   

A large organisation will likely have huge content teams, with different experience and titles. These can vary from content managers, content publishers, content champions, content contributors, content writers, content editors, subject matter experts, etc. Providing or managing content may be just a small part of their other jobs.   

I believe organisations should do more to count the time and overheads of internal content teams, just as you would if you employed outside agencies or freelancers.   

The totals can be frightening but, to truly measure costs, it’s essential to face up to them. It also helps focus the mind on the cost of adding more content. What return value will it provide?    

The cost of wasted time    

Identifying wasted time and inefficiencies is where you can start to make a difference. 

Again you can get huge figures but some are purely academic. Time spent providing quality content saves users time – so it can be a false economy to reduce it. Some people work faster than others, and we all have good and bad days. What’s more important is planning the right content in the first place. 

You can expect a lot of wasted time if content teams are unclear on their brief, as well as the site’s objectives, audiences and content standards. I’ve seen this in many government departments and other organisations. A big complaint is that content approvers often have their own subjective criteria. It causes disagreement and a lot of extra work.  

Content strategy ‘deliverables’ take content governance to a higher level of efficiency, to ensure that everyone shares good practice.  

As well as the usual style and tone of voice guides, they include:   

• content analysis scorecards
• new content ‘justification’ sheets
• content creation briefs and page templates
• content workflows and mapping processes
• messaging hierarchies
• editorial checklists, calendars and approval sheets 
• techniques for search-term monitoring 

Case studies are being provided to show the added value of content strategy. Following COI’s lead, we need to do more to illustrate these financially.  

Content strategy worldwide   

To see how much is going on in content strategy worldwide, have a look at the programme for the content strategy conference Confab 2011 in Minneapolis.   

In the UK this May, Congility focuses on ‘content agility’. 

Another major conference, Content Strategy Forum 2011, is being held in London in September. Topics include:   

• the value of content
• content strategy technique camp
• user experience design and content strategy
• business models for content
• content strategy for video
• how to staff a content strategy project
• technology and content

Content strategy is constantly developing and improving as more organisations join in.  

I’ve only been able to touch the surface here. Please add your comments.   

Leave a comment below, or see the rest of the series:   

Overview to this three-part post   

Part one: The story so far
The spectacular rise and fall of UK government websites, 1994-2011   

Part two: Measuring costs, quality and value
The metrics and standards the UK government uses   

Published on 7 May 2011