How to Create Web Content
Develop Content Goals:
The first step is to develop your content goals – what you want the content of your Web site to communicate to your stakeholders. As you create your goals, you will want to keep in mind that the content you create for your Web site should:
Reflect best practices in Web writing.
Be informative and engaging.
Accurately portray your mission in action.
Engage and Organize Help
Developing content for a Web site is rarely a one-person job. Create a “content task list” to help keep your content providers to task. This list can be created in any popular word-processing or spreadsheet program.
Crucial categories for the content task-list include:
Where does the content fit on your Web site? (Use your site map as a guide.)
Who is responsible for developing the content?
Description (style and length) of the content. Examples are: “250-300 words, paragraph style,” “bulleted list of key points,” or “testimonial no more than 500 words.”
Provide Multiple Ways for Users to Locate Content
More choices exist today to help visitors navigate your Web site. A search box appearing on your home page is still a must, but A–Z indexes for larger sites or “Quick Links” are a big help to visitors looking for a very specific item.
Less popular are graphical representations of your site map. If your navigation is intuitive enough, a site map on your Web site is redundant. This is also more difficult to maintain than a site index.
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