How to focus on people and process for a better website

In an ideal world every new web project would have a clear strategy and plenty of time to create and deliver the best content possible. But in reality you often have no option but to fix what’s already there.

So to make longer-lasting changes to a website, narrow your focus; pick a specific content area to work on, a certain product range or a 2nd or 3rd level category for example. It helps to be objective and analyse the end-to-end publishing approach.

You can start improving a site’s content by making workflow changes first. Braintree’s famous content strategy quad from Content Strategy for the Web includes workflow as one of the “People Components” of your core strategy.

The core strategy quad — image source

This is a good place to start untangling website knots and putting practices into place for web managers and strategists. Here’s how to get cracking:

Benchmark the workflow for new and existing content

Firstly look at the current picture in the area of the site you’ve chosen by imagining that just one word on one page had to be altered (an approach advocated in The Web Content Strategist’s Bible).

Considering just one word means you won’t get hung up on the content itself and can focus on the process. Now, answer the following questions:

=> Who can request this change?
=> Who would approve/reject this change being made?
=> Who would actually make the change once approved?
=> Who would sign it off? Is this the subject matter expert (SME) or someone else?
=> Who would publish the edit(s)?

This will give you the full workflow for new changes for the area you are looking at. You can then use similar questions for a situation where one new page is to be published displaying just one word in order to interrogate the process of publishing new pages.

Once you’re happy with the workflow for the specific example cases — expand things to consider if there are any differences when other types of content are to be published, such as images, animations or videos.

How can the workflow(s) be improved?

Now that you have benchmarked the processes for publishing or amending content, you can work out how best to improve them. Here are some ideas:

1. Ensure that the people who request changes know what sort of edits are acceptable and to whom they should be directed. If this causes issues in your company (e.g. if managers spend too much time redirecting queries) then making sure that people know exactly who to contact will help streamline the process.

2. Empower those who are tasked with approving or rejecting content additions or changes to educate the people suggesting them. This will help ensure that more relevant, useful and on-brand content suggestions are made in the future.

3. Find out if sign offs happen in a timely manner. If this is a problem then the SME (or whoever provides sign offs) should be reminded of their responsibility here. If there is a process issue with the system used to deliver reviews then perhaps this can be altered to speed things up.

4. Discover whether batch processing changes is better or worse. If you can determine whether it is easier or more difficult to publish a number of new pages, to make several edits to a page or to make one edit to several pages, then you have guidance that will help improve publishing. Inform the relevant people whether to group their content changes or handle them individually and tell them how to do so.

Workflow changes generate long-term improvements

In essence the process is simple; pick a certain area of the site, ask the right questions and make sustainable changes and simplifications to the workflow, communicate them to the right people and then extend the approach to other areas of the site.

The things you learn and the improvements you make will add to the overall quality of your web publishing function and to the public face of your company on the web.

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About Hywel

Hywel Curtis is a content strategist and communications consultant who helps businesses grow online. Get a free report on Content Quick Wins — simple ways to improve your website that have an immediate impact — at hywelcurtis.com.