Content audit and analysis
Real life example of content assessment
This is the first step in creating a new menu structure for your site or application.
What we do
We conduct either a content assessment or a content audit, depending on your requirements.
A content assessment involves looking at all the content of your site, or in the case of an application, all the functionality.
We assess each page briefly to:
- understand what the content is about and check that it matches the page title
- relabel the page with a more effective title, if appropriate
- record the page’s place in the current hierarchy, to build up a working file ready for the information architecture work in the design phase (ie. the new menu structure).
For a content audit, the procedure is the same as above, but we also record detailed information about each page, such as a description of the content, content type, author, file size, ownership and approval steps.
We can also conduct a gap analysis, to analyse what content or functionality to support user needs is missing from the current site or application.
Benefits
- The content assessment builds an accurate picture of your site or application, so that the menu structure will fully accommodate your current content as well as providing for future needs
- Your menu structure will not only be easy for users to navigate, but it will be easier for your content producers to know where to put things
- The audit is used as a basis for your content migration work (moving old content into the new site structure). It takes longer than a content assessment but is valuable if you don’t need to rewrite or reshuffle your existing content
- The gap analysis gives you the opportunity to meet your users’ content requirements more fully, and to discard content that isn’t required – improving the overall usefulness of your site or application.
