Content on nsw.gov.au is organised in line with customer needs and expectations. Most content sits within one of our 20 main topics, making it easy for customers to find what they need without needing to know which government agency provides the service or information.
More information:
- Information architecture
- Content writing and design
- Editorial style guidelines
- Guidelines for writing in plain English
Reviewing your pages
Website content should not be a ‘set and forget’ exercise. It’s important that your content is relevant, up to date and accurate. This helps to make sure your customers get what they need and also upholds credibility and trustworthiness across the NSW government website.
It should also be designed with customer needs in mind – not your agency or stakeholder’s needs.
Any sort of page review should start by considering your content strategy. For each page, think about:
- Who is the audience? What do you know about them?
- What is the goal or purpose of the content?
- Is there a clear call to action?
- How complex is the content? What’s the reading age?
- How accessible is the page?
- Is the content of good quality? Are there spelling mistakes, typos, broken links?
More information:
- Running a website content audit
- Audience data from Google Analytics
- Using Google Analytics for usability research
- Reviewing customer feedback
- How to use Siteimprove to check content quality and accessibility
Prioritising which pages to review first
When you’re managing a lot of content, working out where to start with content review can be daunting.
There are a few different ways to prioritise your pages, and work out which ones to review first. You can use each of these metrics separately, or combine them to figure out where to start.
Content age
A good place to start is to look at pages that don’t get updated very often. These are more likely to have errors such as broken links, as they’re not being regularly reviewed as part of routine publishing.
You can sort your pages by oldest to most recent in the CMS.
In the CMS, on the Content tab use the Date Updated column to sort in reverse date order to find pages which haven’t been edited in a while.
Page views
Another good prioritisation technique is to start with pages that get the most traffic. This means you’re concentrating on the pages that your users most need, giving you a good return on your time investment in reviewing them.
Google Analytics can give you page traffic reporting.
Go to GA Reports > Site content > Content – All pages.
Look at your top pages by Views and start there.
Page feedback – Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down
Every page on nsw.gov.au includes the Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down widget which allows customers to rate the page and leave any optional feedback. Pages that get a lot of negative ratings may benefit from a content review.
See Reviewing customer feedback for more information.
Need any more help?
If you have any questions, or require assistance with anything mentioned in this article, submit a request via the webform.