How to build content governance for a web redesign

Imagine relaunching a website after months of hard work and dedication. It looks beautiful, functions well and even has a few new features that users love. But as time passes, you notice the content becoming outdated and inconsistent. Healthcare marketers commonly face this problem, but you can avoid it with the right content and web governance.

Why do websites get outdated?

Healthcare websites are particularly complex.

They include the following types of pages:

• Service pages describing the healthcare services offered
• Health information pages educating readers about conditions and treatments
• Physician bios and practice information pages
• News and blog articles
• Patient portals
• And more

These pages must be accessible and informative while meeting strict regulatory requirements. Initial creation and ongoing management can challenge the best marketing teams.

Larger websites become outdated faster than smaller ones. They have more pages, more content and a higher likelihood of inconsistencies.

With so many moving parts, keeping everything up to date and maintaining a consistent brand image becomes challenging. So why does this happen?

• Failure to keep up with regulatory changes or industry updates
• Inconsistent brand messaging or design elements
• Lack of established guidelines and processes for creating and updating content
• Limited resources and budget constraints
• No clear ownership or accountability for website content
• Poor content management systems or outdated technology
• Multiple writers or contributors creating and updating content without coordination
• A style guide doesn’t exist or writers don’t follow it

When a website becomes outdated, a redesign or overhaul is often necessary. This costly and time-consuming project can help establish strong content governance practices.

5 signs you need content governance on your website

So, how do you know when it’s time to incorporate content governance into your website redesign process?

Here are five signs to look out for:

1. Inconsistent tone and voice: How you communicate your brand’s message varies across different pages.
2. Publishing delays due to long editing or review processes: Your team struggles to keep up with updates.
3. Duplicate content: The same information appears in several places, confusing users.
4. Outdated content: You haven’t refreshed pages in years.
5. Reactive content requests: Every update becomes urgent, disrupting workflows.

Does this sound like your website? If so, it may be time to consider implementing content governance strategies.

What is content governance?

Content governance is the framework that dictates how you create, review and publish content.

You may wonder where content strategy ends and content governance begins. While content strategy focuses on planning and goal-setting, content governance involves the long-term execution of that strategy.

It ensures consistent, high-quality content and efficient internal processes.

These processes include the following four elements:

1. Creation: Creating new content or updating existing content.
2. Review and approval: Reviewing and approving content for accuracy, consistency and alignment with brand standards.
3. Publishing: Making approved content live on the website or other platforms.
4. Maintenance: Managing and updating existing content to make sure it remains relevant and accurate.

It also helps ensure compliance with policies or regulations. This reduces the risk of legal issues or damage to your brand’s reputation. Establishing standards and guidelines for your site content also reduces stress for your team and improves the user experience.

4 tips for creating content standards

Establishing clear content standards is crucial when implementing content governance. These standards will help guide your team in creating consistent, high-quality content.

Here are four tips for creating content standards:

1. Set guidelines: Create a style guide to establish guidelines for tone, voice and style to ensure a consistent brand message.
2. Define your team’s roles and responsibilities: Determine who manages content creation, review and publication. Include roles for internal team members and external contributors such as freelancers or agencies.
3. Create a process: Map out the content creation, review and publication procedures to streamline workflows and reduce delays. Consider how different team members will collaborate and communicate.
4. Train your team: Ensure everyone involved in creating or publishing content understands the established guidelines and workflows.

Here are three tools to help with implementing and maintaining content standards:

• Content calendar: A tool to plan and schedule content creation, review and publication.
• Content audit: A method for assessing and improving existing content on your site. A content audit can help you accomplish the following goals:
  • Identify gaps in your current content.
  • Guide future content creation.
    • Make improvements to boost quality, SEO and user experience.
• Content management system: Technology can help you create, organize and publish content according to the established guidelines.

Now that you have established content standards, monitoring and maintaining them is important. Reviewing and updating the guidelines regularly ensures all team members have established processes to follow.

How to measure success

Make sure your content is effective and aligns with your brand message by measuring its success. Here are some metrics you can use:

• Website traffic: Monitor the number of visits to your site and track if there are any notable increases or decreases over time.
• User engagement: Look at metrics such as bounce rate, time on page and click-through rate to understand how users interact with your content.
• Conversion rates: Track the number of conversions, whether it’s sign-ups, purchases or any other desired action from your audience.
• Social media engagement: Monitor likes, comments and shares on social media platforms to see how well your content resonates with your target audience.
• Customer feedback: Pay attention to your customers’ comments, reviews and feedback to understand how they perceive your content.

By regularly tracking these metrics, you can gain insights into what is working well and what may need improvement in your content strategy. Use this data to make informed decisions for future content creation and publication.

How WG Content can help

Establishing content governance can be overwhelming; sometimes, an outside perspective can help.

WG Content offers services like content audits and gap analysis to help you maintain a well-organized, valuable website. Our team of experts can help with creating style guides and standard processes.

Contact us today to see how we can help improve your content governance and drive better results.

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