Redesigning your website in higher education is a smart move in the age of COVID-19 and digital transformation. When it comes to marketing to prospective students, your website is one of your most important tools. In fact:
Universities might want to improve their website to:
When it comes to web projects and redesigns, addressing underlying content issues is important for getting the best ROI. Content should be a top priority and thought about early in the process as it can make or break your final website.
GatherContent are big proponents of going content first, putting content at the heart of the design process, and having a strong content strategy for website projects in place.
With potentially huge web estates and thousands of pages, (and lots of stakeholders) higher ed website redesigns are no mean feat.
If you’re putting in a lot of effort, you want to ensure content is high quality, compliant, and won’t take you over budget or deadlines — delayed content and website launches are very common problems in higher ed.
To help, here are some key things to think about when rewriting and developing content for a successful website, and making sure you have the right tools and frameworks in place:
Content audits are dreaded by many, but they are so important for getting the most out of your website redesigns. Lauren Pope has written an excellent article on planning a content audit that works for you. To decide what content has value and what to archive, or rewrite, look at analytics data and ask questions around:
Having an inventory will stand you in good stead for maintaining your content in the future. Use this content audit spreadsheet template to get you started with auditing criteria and what to include in your inventory.
All content on your website needs to be tied back to user needs and organisational goals. Think about things like:
Before and after creating content, you need good content governance, which is “doing the right thing.” It’s about creating a set of content procedures and systems that define how content is planned created published, including:
A key part of information architecture, content models state what you need to know about different pages. In it, you need to outline the content types, their relationship to each other, and the metadata on each content type.
Use this content model template to determine content types such as course pages, subject areas, and academic bios. It also helps you determine content attributes too. For example, your course page content type might comprise attributes like course name, description, modules, fees, etc.
It’s important to define a clear process to plan, produce and manage content in a collaborative way during your website redesign. You don’t want to be slowed down by wrangling approvals or communication breakdown.
You need to think about people, processes and tools holistically (your Content Operations), in order to effectively manage stakeholders and empower people. Make sure you have:
GatherContent does all of this and more and is perfect for large website redesigns in higher education. It integrates with your CMS to automate content migration — no more copy and pasting!
Check out these two case studies to see how Cornell University used GatherContent to connect silos, and how Illinois State University used it for consistent content across multiple website redesigns.
Usability is a key part of good user experience on your website, and website visitors expect usable, useful content, that helps them get from A to B. Encouraging self-service through web content is important in usability, to reduce frustration for visitors and repetitive queries for teams.
This case study from The University of Edinburgh explains how they embarked on a two-year project to iteratively improve IT help web content for self-service. When thinking about content usability, consider:
Migrating content to a new CMS can be a risky process if you don’t do it right. You need to have an action plan to make sure you don’t lose any traffic or SEO credibility when you transfer content. Moz has a great step-by-step guide for this, and GatherContent has a content migration checklist that you can use to check you have everything in place before you move everything over.
Measuring content performance is important after a redesign. Both to monitor any changes and drops in traffic since migration and also because well, a redesign is pointless without it! Make sure you have well-defined goals for measuring the impact of our work. Remember not to bother with ‘vanity metrics’ and focus on how effective content actually is for your users and strategic goals.
Zach Parcell, Content Strategy and User Experience Manager at Illinois State University recently did a webinar on meeting university goals and audience needs with their website strategy, including adding better contact forms and providing more ways for visitors to ask questions. The outcomes were:
GatherContent helps over 170 universities with all aspects of their ContentOps, and this is important to get right when you are building or redesigning a website. GatherContent helps to:
Why not try a demo or free trial to see what it can do for your university?
Redesigning your website in higher education is a smart move in the age of COVID-19 and digital transformation. When it comes to marketing to prospective students, your website is one of your most important tools. In fact:
Universities might want to improve their website to:
When it comes to web projects and redesigns, addressing underlying content issues is important for getting the best ROI. Content should be a top priority and thought about early in the process as it can make or break your final website.
GatherContent are big proponents of going content first, putting content at the heart of the design process, and having a strong content strategy for website projects in place.
With potentially huge web estates and thousands of pages, (and lots of stakeholders) higher ed website redesigns are no mean feat.
If you’re putting in a lot of effort, you want to ensure content is high quality, compliant, and won’t take you over budget or deadlines — delayed content and website launches are very common problems in higher ed.
To help, here are some key things to think about when rewriting and developing content for a successful website, and making sure you have the right tools and frameworks in place:
Content audits are dreaded by many, but they are so important for getting the most out of your website redesigns. Lauren Pope has written an excellent article on planning a content audit that works for you. To decide what content has value and what to archive, or rewrite, look at analytics data and ask questions around:
Having an inventory will stand you in good stead for maintaining your content in the future. Use this content audit spreadsheet template to get you started with auditing criteria and what to include in your inventory.
All content on your website needs to be tied back to user needs and organisational goals. Think about things like:
Before and after creating content, you need good content governance, which is “doing the right thing.” It’s about creating a set of content procedures and systems that define how content is planned created published, including:
A key part of information architecture, content models state what you need to know about different pages. In it, you need to outline the content types, their relationship to each other, and the metadata on each content type.
Use this content model template to determine content types such as course pages, subject areas, and academic bios. It also helps you determine content attributes too. For example, your course page content type might comprise attributes like course name, description, modules, fees, etc.
It’s important to define a clear process to plan, produce and manage content in a collaborative way during your website redesign. You don’t want to be slowed down by wrangling approvals or communication breakdown.
You need to think about people, processes and tools holistically (your Content Operations), in order to effectively manage stakeholders and empower people. Make sure you have:
GatherContent does all of this and more and is perfect for large website redesigns in higher education. It integrates with your CMS to automate content migration — no more copy and pasting!
Check out these two case studies to see how Cornell University used GatherContent to connect silos, and how Illinois State University used it for consistent content across multiple website redesigns.
Usability is a key part of good user experience on your website, and website visitors expect usable, useful content, that helps them get from A to B. Encouraging self-service through web content is important in usability, to reduce frustration for visitors and repetitive queries for teams.
This case study from The University of Edinburgh explains how they embarked on a two-year project to iteratively improve IT help web content for self-service. When thinking about content usability, consider:
Migrating content to a new CMS can be a risky process if you don’t do it right. You need to have an action plan to make sure you don’t lose any traffic or SEO credibility when you transfer content. Moz has a great step-by-step guide for this, and GatherContent has a content migration checklist that you can use to check you have everything in place before you move everything over.
Measuring content performance is important after a redesign. Both to monitor any changes and drops in traffic since migration and also because well, a redesign is pointless without it! Make sure you have well-defined goals for measuring the impact of our work. Remember not to bother with ‘vanity metrics’ and focus on how effective content actually is for your users and strategic goals.
Zach Parcell, Content Strategy and User Experience Manager at Illinois State University recently did a webinar on meeting university goals and audience needs with their website strategy, including adding better contact forms and providing more ways for visitors to ask questions. The outcomes were:
GatherContent helps over 170 universities with all aspects of their ContentOps, and this is important to get right when you are building or redesigning a website. GatherContent helps to:
Why not try a demo or free trial to see what it can do for your university?
Paige is an English Literature and Media graduate from Newcastle University, and over the last three years has built up a career in SEO-driven copywriting for tech companies. She has written for Microsoft, Symantec and LinkedIn, as well as other SaaS companies and IT consulting firms. With an audience-focused approach to content, Paige handles the lifecycle from creation through to measurement, supporting businesses with their content operations.