Web Content Problems Content Management Support Team Poor / - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Web Content Problems

Content Management Support Team

Poor / Duplicate Page Titles

• User experience:
• “Is this the right place?”
• “This has the same name as that other page
• University risk:
• Lack of site user engagement
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Possible causes:
• Not understanding the importance of page titles
• n web
• Poor consideration of SEO
• Poor web writing skills (not same as writing skills)
• Solutions:
• Use your site visitors keywords
• Create unique page titles
• Write heading that match your URL
• Keep it short (up to eight words)
• Use page summaries
• Verb phrases

Broken links

• User experience:
• “Can I trust the rest of the site?”
• University risk:
• Loss of credibility
• Missed opportunity to engage with user
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Causes:
• Poor site maintenance
• Unmanaged site changes
• Poor archiving
• Solutions:
• Link to sites that are unlikely to change
• Linking to a navigation page may be better

choice than linking to the destination page

• Check links regularly (at least once a year)

Inappropriate voice and tone

• User experience:
• “Not for me”
• “Not very friendly / Too familiar”
• University risk:
• Loss of reputation
• Reduction in return visitors
• Waste time of site user who has to decode copy
• Possible causes:
• Not understanding the need for a consistent voice

and tone.

• Multiple updaters
• Lack of overview / guidance
• Solutions
• Engage with the site user (You and We)
• Rewrite with a positive, active voice
• Seek clarification on voice and tone guidelines

Bloated web pages

• User experience: “can’t find what I want”
• University risk:
• Lack of site user engagement
• Reduction in return visitors
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Possible causes:
• Poor copy writing
• Lack of review/editing/proof reading
• Not understanding the importance of patterns
• Solutions:
• Chunking (break text into smaller paragraphs)
• Challenge yourself to rewrite the page with half

the words and then do it again

• Using headings and sub headings
• Get help from an experienced editor
• Remove needless words and vague phrases

Poor copy

• User experience:
• “Too much hard work”
• “If they can’t write, what are their services like ”
• University risk:
• Lack of site user engagement
• Waste time of site user who has to decode copy
• Reduction in return visitors
• Possible causes:
• Multiple updaters
• Lack of workflow/overview
• Poor web writing (even by good writers)
• Solutions:
• Get someone to proof read copy before publishing / get advice from experienced copywriter
• Be concise and use plain English
• Sentence: 20 words or fewer
• Paragraphs: 70 words (roughly 4 sentences)

Bad navigation (too much / too little)

• User experience:
• “where do I go from here?”
• “What do I click first?”
• University risk:
• Poor site user engagement
• Distract and waste time of site user
• Possible causes:
• Poor navigation/destination design
• Poor information architecture
• Not understand how site users categorise subjects
• Solutions:
• Develop a linking strategy
• Categorise your site user keyword to create a

taxonomy on which to base navigation

• Follow link writing guidelines
• Consistent navigation patterns

Duplicate pages / contents

• User experience:
• “which page is right?”
• University risk:
• Loss of credibility
• Loss of reputation
• Wasted staff time/resources
• Possible causes:
• Creating a replacement page and not deleting

the original

• Replicating colleagues pages
• Poor archiving
• Solution:
• Content inventory
• Update existing new pages rather than

replacing pages

Inaccessible page

• User experience:
• “Where is that page?”
• “I give up”
• University risk:
• Missed opportunity to engage with user
• Loss of credibility
• Wasted staff time/resources
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Possible causes:
• Poor SEO
• Poor linking strategy
• Poor information architecture
• Solutions
• Write a meaningful URL that reflects the

purpose of the page

• Use site visitors keywords in the title
• Use page summaries to support SEO

Duplicate documents

• User experience:
• “download here or there?”
• “Which is the right copy”
• Strategic context:
• Frustrate the site user
• Loss of credibility
• Wasted staff resource
• Possible causes:
• Poor CMS resource management
• Poor naming
• Solutions:
• Place the resource in one location on the web

server/CMS and link to it from multiple locations

• Content Inventory/Audit
• Replace existing document rather than

uploading new and deleting old

Out of date documents

• User experience:
• “Is this the latest version?”
• “Should I take action on what is says?”
• University risk:
• Loss of reputation
• Users acting on misinformation
• Legal liability
• Possible causes:
• Poor version control
• Poor naming conventions
• CMS resource management
• Solutions
• Don’t use dates in resource names
• Use same name each year to replace old

version

Deleted pages

• User experience:
• “it used to be here”
• “is the University site working?”
• University risk:
• Missed opportunity to engage with user
• Loss of credibility
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Possible causes:
• Not understanding how the CMS deletes and updates

resources

• Not informing people who link to your site of changes
• Solutions:
• Follow the content retirement procedure
• Check the popularity of a page before deleting
• Update existing new pages rather than replacing pages
• Review referral traffic and back links before removing pages

Inappropriate use of images

• User experience:
• “I’ve seen this before”
• “What does that mean?”
• University risk:
• Distract and waste time of site user
• Legal liability
• Possible causes:
• Poor image sourcing / selection
• Not matching image to message
• Solution:
• Make sure images use is not copy write
• Use images only when they are critical to the success of a web page

Inappropriate Image size/format

• User experience:
• “Too big/small”
• “What’s that supposed to be?”
• University risk:
• Lack of user engagement
• Distract and waste time of site user
• Possible causes:
• Lack of adherence to naming conventions
• Lack of usability testing
• Not understanding format implications
• Feel-good images are largely ignored
• Solutions:
• Use images only when they are critical to the success of a web page
• Match photos to your messages
• Provide big photos only when they are requested
• Make sure images do not severely decrease download speeds
• Follow guideline to good practice of using images

Poor document naming

• User experience:
• “can’t find document”
• “take too long to type this URL”
• University risk:
• Lack of user engagement
• Wasted staff resources
• Possible causes:
• Not following naming conventions
• Filename not matching document title
• Solutions:
• Use short URLs
• Link to page containing download rather than download directly

Download size

• User experience:
• “When will this finish downloading”
• “Far, too long to read”
• “Can’t be bothered to wait”
• University risk:
• Lack of user engagement
• Waste time of site user waiting for download
• Possible causes:
• Poor content planning
• Poor formatting of images / pdf
• Solution:
• Reduce size of download (e.g. remove images)
• Inform user of download size / time
• Convert download to a screen copy

Low readership

• User experience:
• “Important but hidden”
• University risk:
• Lack of user engagement
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Wasted staff time / resources
• Possible causes:
• Irrelevant (to site visitor) content
• Poorly written copy
• Copy that is not engaging
• Solutions:
• Evaluate content
• Write engaging content using visitors

keywords

• Place page in high traffic area (especially

news stories)

Risks to the University

• Loss of credibility
• site user will not believe your message and will not return
• Lack of site user engagement / missed opportunity to engage with user
• you are no going to get your message across
• Loss of reputation
• Site visitor has a increasingly negative view of the University because of the web
• Frustrating, distracting and the site user
• Unlikely to get your message across
• Reduction in return visitors
• Site visitors will use other sources of information phone, email, visit, friends
• Legal liability
• Increased pressure on telephone / email
• Wasted staff time / resources
• Developing resources (page copy, downloads and images) that are not going to be used