Transcript Document
Beyond the CMS: creating quality web content with your content management system © Rachel McAlpine 2004 Your shiny-bright content management system Benefits of a CMS • • • • • • autonomy for staff speed of publishing control of publishing consistent look sane navigation better search potential However... your CMS is only as good as its content. Content is the elephant in the drawing room Everybody knows their content problems • • • • • • saggy baggy badly written wordy, burbly cold, abstract can’t be found poor search results. And then there’s ROT • Redundant content • Outdated content • Trivial content Sheer size creates problems Risks when putting long publications online • • • • • • • loss of context loss of identity loss of structure multiple versions inaccessible PDFs print version too large pages out of sequence A new CMS is a chance to: • • • • • raise the standard of content set standards for content establish quality assurance systems redesign and test navigation create new content to fit the new navigation system Who is on your team? • • • • • governance people? IT people? business analysts? usability experts? designers? Is there a content expert on your team? Essential steps for improving content quality • • • • • • • review current content analyse internet goals of your organisation analyse internet goals of each department create new navigation and test it with users identify, limit and focus new content remove all ROT and ban new ROT provide training, resources and systems for authors Test your templates for usability Customise your template language • keywords? “search keywords” and “subject keywords” • “summary” not “abstract” or “description” • “search result page title” not “page name” or “page title” • “page headline” not “page name” or “page title” • “text description” not “long description” Take a tip: one page, one purpose • • • • • • • • news procedures interaction index tips opinion instruction policy Stop creating ROT Systems & procedures to minimise ROT: • dates for review • author, approver, owner • workflow for publishing • workflow for QA • roles and job descriptions that include authoring content Long documents often need to be: • • • • deconstructed repurposed rewritten reassembled as stand-alone pages For good search results... think ahead 1. technology 2. content 3. metadata Train your authors... plan ahead Keep resources for authors on the intranet • • • • • • • content standards model pages pop-up tip of the week buddy system contact for help refresher courses style guide Web content worthy of the container © Rachel McAlpine 2004 www.qwc.co.nz