Content is the phase of the website redesign process where perfectionism always sets in. While having a polished website before launch is certainly something to strive for, the “80/20” rule applies here.
For a while, we partnered with our clients when they wanted to rewrite the bulk of their content in-house. We recently changed our viewpoint on this, and I wanted to write more about why.
Sidenote: The 80/20 rule applies to this post as well. This methodology applies to about 80% of the clients that we work with. Yes, there are edge cases where this is not applicable.
Why does this matter?
The website rebuild process is not simple. There is a lot of content to contend with. Defining what is most important from the beginning is key because we don’t want you to get caught up in trying to solve every problem in this website redesign.
If timelines and budgets had fewer constraints, time could be spent on all pages of the sitemap.
However, it often makes more sense to take a phased approach to the website, focus 80% of the time on the key pages, and migrate the other content over as-is.
What deserves a rewrite?
In a previous post, I discussed the importance of taking a minimalist approach to a website’s sitemap. The foundation of that post springboards this one.
When going through the rebuild process, most of your service lines and products (at their core) are unchanged. How those products solve problems for customers is unchanged. The details of those services (what they are and how customers work with you) are unchanged. The purchasing process and the FAQs are also unchanged.
What is changing is the frontline message. It’s what you want customers to see first. It is how you talk about your customer’s pain points and how you can guide them to a better solution by working together. It is the pages that emotionally connect with your customers, making them think, ” Oh yeah, that does sound like me.”
This is why I’m a proponent of minimizing the sitemap from Day 1. Asking the questions:
- What do we do better than anyone else?
- What core pain points do customers have?
- How do we help guide them to a solution?
- What is the “trigger” to make one of your customers search for solutions?
The answers to those questions should prompt the pages you need in your sitemap, which need to be rewritten prior to launching your site.
What do we do with pages not being rewritten?
I will start with something cliche: “Your website is a living document that should consistently be updated with your marketing team’s plans.”
How should we think through these pages? We don’t want to completely ignore them (a literal copy/paste would be doing a disservice to an investment in a website); however, diving deep wouldn’t be a good use of a limited budget.
Bucket Pages with Common Structures
Take the sitemap out of the picture for a moment. What pages can utilize a similar template structure from the remaining pages? That’s not to say each page in that bucket will look exactly like the template. However, it’s a starting point.
The goal is to be able to say:
“This group for 14 pages should be able to fit into a page layout like this.”
The goal is to come to an agreement on those groups of pages (and which page template would best serve them) and then move the content over to follow that structure as close to 1:1 as possible.
Doing this will allow for a few quick wins:
- The old content on your site will be updated enough to fit into the new template
- It ensures that all the new design elements are being used across the site
- It also ensures that the right CTAs are used across pages (even if they were lacking on the current site).
Why do we handle content writing for a website redesign?
The minimalist sitemap I talked about before is going to be angled toward potential customers who are trying to learn how you can solve their problems. These pages aren’t supposed to be technical; they require simplicity.
It’s hard to zoom out and write from that 30,000-foot view when you’re in the business. It’s easy to dive too deep, get too technical, and lose focus.
Writing words that:
- Fit into the layouts that have been designed
- Have the appropriate CTAs
- Tell a cohesive story throughout the page
It isn’t simple.
Over the course of two decades, we’ve collected content from our clients in various ways. There isn’t an easy (or good) way to do this.
We decided that rather than sending over these disconnected layouts/designs and having you figure out what words will fit into each element, we will draft the first round of content for all the key pages we define in the sitemap.
That way, the first thing you see when you look at your website redesign in a browser for the first time is a website with real content (written by humans) that tells your story. All you have to do is tweak wherever necessary.
The website process isn’t simple. Let’s remove one piece from your plate that typically causes more consternation than it’s worth.