Our Content Strategy

Introduction

This page outlines our Content Strategy and approach to the development, governance and publication of useful and usable content.

We are now working together as one council for Somerset. This has brought together all council services. We are delivering our services through a single website (unless doing so will impair the delivery of the service). The content on multiple duplicate pages has been merged providing one page for each service. The use of a district picker is still in place in some areas while we wait for services to align.

The understanding of the ways in which customers use Local Government websites has changed the way in which we understand the purpose of the Council’s website. Most customers do not come to the website to read about the Council but to transact with us when they have a specific need. The need to present useful, but usable content, to enable customers to efficiently achieve their goals has become important. Because of this, there is a need for a clear, documented strategy defining the Council’s approach to digital content.

This page outlines our approach to the development and publication of digital content. Content that is accessed through various digital channels.

It includes:

• The objectives and benefits of the strategy
• Guidelines defining what content is appropriate for digital publication, and how it should be written and presented
• The key considerations we make so that our content performs well in search engines
• The content workflow process
• The process for appealing content decisions
• Our content review guidelines

All content must be produced and managed following the principles laid out in this strategy.

Strategy Review

This Content Strategy will be reviewed every 12 months to make sure that it is still relevant with changing technologies and customer behaviour.

Objectives and benefits

The quality of digital content that the Council produces will affect the success of our digital channels. Poor content makes confused and unhappy customers. Well-structured content that allows our customers to efficiently transact with us will lead to happy customers and financial savings.

Our Content Strategy will provide the following objectives and benefits

Content that is useful and usable – No matter how useful our content is, if it is not presented in a usable way then it will not meet the needs of our customers. All content will focus on our customers so that they can achieve what they need efficiently, effectively and accurately.

Service content that is aligned and improved – A regular full site review will help us to identify similar and crossover pages. These will be rewritten to become one version. We will reduce, simplify, combine or remove content on the site where not needed. We will publish high quality content that is customer focused, accurate, useful, up to date and easy to understand. This should help to retain confidence in our information.

Trust built through consistency – Our Content Strategy will include clear voice and tone guidelines to control the way in which our content is written. If our content is presented using a clear single voice, even if it has been written by a range of different authors, it will encourage a higher level of trust from our customers.

Providing the best layout for our content – We will make the layout of page information clear and engaging using the best template available and our agreed house styles. New content templates will also be used to set out information steps and pathways. This will make complicated topics clearer, easier to navigate and understand for our customers.

Content will be as accessible as possible – We will make our website content accessible to all users, particularly those with disabilities. Compliance with web accessibility is an ongoing process. We will regularly monitor content accessibility using Silktide and enhance our content where needed. Making our content as accessible and inclusive as possible.

Reduce avoidable contact through other channels – Effectively enforcing this Content Strategy will reduce the time and costs involved in managing customers who are driven to contact us using other channels because they cannot find what they need. This strategy will ensure that content is produced and presented in a manner that will encourage channel shift where appropriate.

Support the delivery of efficient Contact Centre services – Give Advisors access to the right information in the right place at right time. We will keep Contact Centre colleagues informed of of key decisions made on site and any changes to structure.

Make sure all content editors get high-quality training – We will make sure all content creators and editors have access to plain English guidance and support. This will mean that we will all write content that is clear and customer-focused.

Adapt and improve the content using customer feedback – We will put the needs of our customers first by designing our content and navigation around them and act on feedback where we can. Feedback helps us to measure customer experience, monitor how we are doing and find out if we have the right information in the right place. There is an easy way for customers to let us know their comments and we will show where they have been acted on.

Measure performance for future development of content – We will use Silktide to identify areas of improvement after go-live and also act on areas of concern. This will inform us of customer needs, where we have things right and areas that need improvement.

Our overall objective is for better content that is easy to read, understand and find.

You can read more about our content standards, best practices and the templates we use here

Content principles and writing style

The purpose of the Council’s website is not to publish everything about us, but to present clear customer-focused information to help customers interact with us. This means avoiding the publication of overly detailed information, or information for which the Council is not responsible for. It is about publishing only the information that the customer needs to complete a task or find information about.

The LocalGovDigital content standard also provides a set of useful questions for us to ask to determine whether an item is published on the website and whether the item is presented in a useful way. These should be referred to when we are considering creating an item of content, and when reviewing content:

• Is the content original?
• Is the content answering a question that our customers are asking?
• Can the content be found using search words that make sense to the customer?
• Is our content easy to read and understandable?
• Are the graphics and pictures appropriate and do they add something to the page? As a rule, we do not use images.

When we write content for our website, we also follow the principles of Plain English. In other words, keeping our meanings simple and clear. You can find out more on the Plain English Campaign website.

Our Style Guide

Our style guide applies to all content published on our website. It outlines how we write and our best practice guides on planning and designing content for the web.

It includes guidance on specific points of style, such as abbreviations and numbers. And our style for specific words and phrases, in terms of spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation.

Our style guide will be reviewed regularly and we will add more information when we can. We use the GOV.UK style guide as a baseline.

Content Structure

There are different ways in which we structure our content, The main ways are:

Task focused content

• An action-based page title (For example Report an abandoned vehicle).
• Clear information outlining what information the customer needs to complete the task at the top of the page.
• A clear call to action.
• Any additional useful information.
• Do not include any information that is not directly relevant to the completion of the task.

Information based content

• The first paragraph of content should be a brief overview of the content to help the customer understand if it is what they are looking for.
• Break detailed information into clear sections using sub-headings.

Content governance and quality assurance

Strong content governance will make sure that the Council’s website provides customers with useful and useable content to meet their needs. It will make sure that all content published on the website:

• Meets a customer’s need
• Is of a high quality
• Conforms with the Council’s Writing Style Guidelines
• Remains relevant and up to date
• Helps to reduce internal workloads and customer frustration
• Helps reduce contact using other, more expensive, channels

Workflow

All content must be submitted to the new combined Digital Content Team for approval and publication. It will be proofread and spell-checked to confirm that it meets the Council’s writing style guidelines and to make sure that it meets the requirements for online publication. This will include assessing whether the content serves a customer-focused purpose.

All content will be either approved or rejected within 5 days of submission to the Digital Content Team. In cases where content is urgent, the Digital Content Team will prioritise accordingly.

When a rejected item has been re-submitted for approval the 5-day approval turnaround period will again apply.

The Digital Content Team are responsible for the quality of the Council’s website and the user experience provided to our customers. The Digital Content Team have final say everything relating to online content.

Content Inventory and audit

Our website should only show up-to-date and current content that meets a user’s need. If there is not a user need or a statutory duty to publish, it should not be on our website.

Our content will be reviewed as we are asked to make updates and a full check of content will take place each year. Pages that are no longer needed will be unpublished and will not be found on our website.

A review or expiry date must be set for every item of content. This must be done when being submitted to the Digital Content Team for approval and publication.

Review Dates: The frequency of the review period should be judged according to the nature of the content, but every item must be reviewed at least annually.

Expiry Dates: Where an item has a fixed lifespan (a campaign, seasonal content for example) an expiry date must be set to remove the content as soon as it is not relevant. If no review or expiry date has been set, then the item will be rejected by the Digital Content Team.

Content tools and resources

Team Planners (Kanban’s)

We use a Team Kanban’s to plan, track and complete our work. The focus of a Kanban shows identified work, work-in-progress and work steps and flow. It creates the environment necessary for a self-organising team to evolve itself over time. This makes it an effective tool for change management and should make it easier for us to make progress one step at a time.

Content Team Values and Charter

We have set up a team charter which documents our agreed team values and working practices. This will help new staff to understand the way we work and reminds existing team members of the actions we have agreed to.

Retrospectives

We have retrospective discussions after being involved with any large content projects. This is to give everyone in the team a chance to identify and discuss potential improvements in a safe and supportive environment. It should give a chance to ask questions such as what worked well, what didn’t work well, what we learned and what can we change. Out of these discussions should come actionable improvements that could be used to try to make our process better.