Designing a new digital style guide, part 1
Why we needed a new one and how we began the process.
This series of blogposts will cover why we are creating a new style guide, the research we did to create it and how we will launch and disseminate the new guide once it is complete.
Why clear writing is important
Working in the digital team, we are constantly working to better our web content. We know that we fight to get our readers’ attention and we fight to keep their attention.
As part of our website rebuild, we undertook a content audit. We focused on key sections of our website and navigated our way through them based on proposed user needs. We looked at data relating to the usage of each page and some of our findings were disheartening.
A common problem was that it was hard to quickly find the information you were looking for. Our paragraphs were long and wordy. Headings didn’t indicate the contents of the section. There was a lack of clarity and direction in the content we were putting out. But mainly, the content wasn’t optimised for web users.
As a university, we care about widening participation. We want to optimise our content for accessibility. Regardless of circumstance or environment, we believe that everyone should be able to get clear information from us.
Why now is the time to change how we work
A lot of content creation at our university comes from within the relevant department and is put directly on our website. We currently have around 140 editors for our CMS. The number of editors is a little unsettling, but the biggest issue was the lack of guidance we had for them. These editors are specialists in their fields, but they aren’t specialists in writing content for the web.
We are in a period of digital development. Earlier this year, we launched a new brand and logo. We redesigned and redeveloped our website. We implemented 3 design principles that focused on ensuring clarity in our designs and messaging. We realised we needed clear writing guidance to ensure our content met these principles.
Why a new style guide could be integral to solving our content challenges
To make sure our editors are creating accessible and inclusive web content, we thought now was the time to create a new style guide. A guide that went beyond spelling and styling and included how to write readable web content. A guide that would help us solve our problems with reader retention and content clarity.
Our new style guide needed to be directed by the data we were using to assess how effective our content was. We could see what we were doing wrong by looking at heatmaps, analytics and readability software. We could see how we could do better when we looked at accessibility research and readability guidelines.
The principles that will underpin the design of the new style guide
The new guide will have accessibility and readability as its foundations. Where possible, everything will be backed up by data or research. We will suggest the removal of title case in headings because of research that shows title case is harder to read. Based on eyetracking data, we will suggest how to use subheadings to guide users through content. We will explain the importance of plain English for usability and inclusivity. And we will explain how this matches up with our value of widening participation in higher education.
In our former style guides, there was a focus on what to do, not why to do it. In our new guide, this will be different. It will also be part of a bigger project. A content toolkit containing new processes, templates and training.
Our goal? To ensure our messages are aligned to our design principles and make sure every web editor has the guidance they need to create more effective content.
Head back next week to read part two.
