The Obvious Thing Your Content Strategy is Missing.

This Hot Take was written by Kristin Van Dorn

A common complaint about website maintenance is that an institution’s content strategists and site editors make changes daily, but the site keeps getting busier and harder to decipher.

Content clarity erodes over time. You see, our institutions and the economic, social, and technological environments we find ourselves in are in a constant state of flux:

1. The information environment changes. New grants or scholarships may become available, and new tools may be developed to help prospective students forecast debt. Your competitors start emphasizing new messaging, and it behooves you to adjust.
2. Programmatic changes require new content. Maybe your institution’s curriculum evolves to fit the job market’s needs, or you consolidate or expand degree options.
3. Technological changes require new content. You introduce new processes that require different instructions. Students have access to more and better tools. You have access to new functionality on your site to display information in a more user-friendly way.
4. Most importantly, user expectations change. Your prospective students get used to seeing certain website patterns (e.g., a hamburger menu or “scrollytelling”). And, as your site ages, the usage you planned for becomes less intuitive – quickly, I might add.

It’s why your website is never done. We all know that.

Updating your website initially feels clear and straightforward. Over time, though, the logic of your content framework and information architecture may no longer feel up to the task at hand—effortlessly getting users to the content they need.

Don’t believe me? Here are some symptoms. #

1. You start hearing that students can’t find what they need.
2. Requests for help go up.
3. Your website metrics start to decline.

You might be thinking, *oh goodness, not another redesign project.

Don’t panic. Between redesigns, you can take steps to support your content infrastructure. The most obvious one is to make each page’s purpose obvious.

Why “obvious” matters. #

Quick – Why do people come to your website?

People go to a website with a purpose:

• They want to know what programs you have to find out if there is one that appeals to them.
• They want to know how much it costs to figure out if they can afford to attend.
• They want to know what your campus life is like **so they can predict***if they will make connections and feel accepted.
• They want to see outcomes data to determine their likelihood of getting a good job after attending.

These are just some macro examples. Micro examples might include finding out if they:

• qualify for a certain scholarship
• can work on campus
• can meet with an advisor before applying
• can transfer in credits from their previous institution
• meet program-specific admission criteria

All of these are possible jobs to accomplish along the way to applying. Prospective students don’t come to see outcomes data. They come to make a decision based on the outcomes data they see.

Knowing that your audiences intend to do something with your content means your content serves a purpose. You and your audience knowing exactly what that purpose is means your content is intuitive. When it is not obvious what your audience should do with the information presented, it means it’s not intuitive. Does that make sense?

How to make your content’s purpose more obvious #

Write descriptive headings and first sentences. Headlines and first sentences are often created first when they should be written last. They are the tools to prepare your audience for what to expect in a given content section. The more specific they are, the more useful they can be when someone is skimming or looking for particular instructions.

Explain exactly what audiences can do with this content. Suppose you set up a partnership with a Fortune 500 company in your state, and that partnership includes cooperative learning opportunities. Promoting the future direction of the university’s partnership office and its new agreements with regional businesses is less important than it is to call attention to the process prospective students can take to show their interest, register for pre-requisite courses, and plan their future schedules.

Refine calls to action. What you expect your audience to do next will convey a lot about what you think the purpose of your content is. If your calls to action on a page about residential life are “explore our programs,” “discover our financial aid,” and “meet with admissions,” your audience will think your residential life content ends right there. If it doesn’t, you should lead them to take the next step with a message like, “Talk with a current student ambassador living on campus.”

So, what are your next steps? #

The first step is to audit your site’s pages. This can be done as part of a more general content audit or as a separate content strategy project.

What you want to do is evaluate each page based on questions like:

1. Is the purpose of this page clear?
2. Do users know how to use this information to accomplish a goal?
3. Do users know where to go to complete their next action?

You can even rank pages as “unclear” to “obvious” and address the least clear pages first. I love conducting these kinds of audits because they are a quick way to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your content. I think you’ll find a project like this energizing too.

**If you want help with your audit, give us a shout. **Within a few weeks, we’ll create a roadmap for low-lift improvements from an external perspective that your team can quickly run with.