Content Design Read online

  Foreword

  While most of us were off chasing the next new-new internet tricks, a group of UK strategists and designers – led by Sarah Richards – had quietly redefined the standards for how a government could serve its constituents online. And they didn’t do it with fancy technology, ‘innovative’

  design, or a horde of expensive consultants: they did it with words.

  Our industry pays a lot of lip-service to ‘user-centered content.’ Put the user first, we say. Anticipate their needs. Prioritize their preferences. Deliver delightful experiences! The problem is that all too often, we don’t actually spend the time or money to find out what our users really, truly care about in the first place. As deadlines loom, we begin to allow our assumptions drive the bus. ‘We already know our users, because we’ve been serving them for such a long time.’ Or, ‘Our research didn’t really give us quite the right information, but we’ll just use what we have for now.’

  Good web teams aren’t lazy about research. They aren’t satisfied with half-baked personas. They don’t just kick content out the door and move on to the next thing. They are relentless about asking better questions, analyzing data, and iterative improvement. They’re in it for the long haul, and they’re in it for the user. That’s essentially why GOV.UK succeeds. It’s why content strategists

  around the world point to the site again and again as an example of what can be done if you are brave enough to let user-centered content lead the way.

  And it does take courage. When you are reinventing an online service from the ground up, there’s nowhere to hide. Either you nail it or you don’t.

  Sarah’s team nailed it, and they did it with the most straightforward, honest approach to design I’ve ever seen. They defined measurable goals, identified key obstacles, navigated them with data-based decisions, and delivered an unparalleled user experience … designed solely with content. What’s more, they did it out in the open, bringing the rest of us along for the ride. That work continues today, in no part thanks to Sarah’s visionary articulation of the value of content design.

  Sarah is a consummate problem-solver. Her work in content design has given us a flexible set of tools to identify, articulate, and meet our users’ most important needs. Above all else, she is pragmatic in her work – she has no time for silver bullets or ‘the next big thing.’ She’s straightforward in her approach and unrelenting in her pursuit of simplicity, both in her own instruction and in what she delivers to the user.

  All that said: she knows her readers. She knows we are word fanatics. That we strive 24/7 to empathize with our audiences. That, more than anything, we want to do meaningful work that contributes to the

  success of both our users and our organizations.

  We are her audience. And she’s done the hard work to help us succeed. This book is the result of that hard work. Read it, re-read it, and keep it close at hand. It will help you build a better web.

  Kristina Halvorson

  May 2017

  Founder, Brain Traffic and Confab Events Author, Content Strategy for the Web

  This

  book

  explains

  content

  design

  It will tell you what content

  design means,

  how it’s different

  from copywriting,

  and how to

  make it work

  successfully in

  your organisation.

  It takes you through the

  content design process, one

  step at a time, with frequent reference to fictional examples and to real-world situations I’ve encountered during my career.

  This book is not about content

  strategy, the

  process that gives

  you an idea of what

  you are publishing

  where and why.

  Ideally, you should understand your content strategy before you start working on content design.

  Content strategy is a subject of its own, and someone else has already written the book on it: I recommend Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach.

  This book is not about design as in

  graphics, icons, look

  and feel, colours,

  interaction and so

  on. It’s about the

  content that sits

  within the design.

  Contents

  1 Introduction

  Preparation

  Chapter 1

  9

  Why content design matters

  Chapter 2

  27

  The science of reading

  Chapter 3

  45

  Content discovery and research Chapter 4

  91

  User stories and job stories Chapter 5

  109

  Bringing your organisation with you

  Designing

  Chapter 6

  123

  Designing content

  Chapter 7

  135

  Writing content

  Chapter 8

  157

  Pair writing

  Chapter 9

  171 Crits

  Chapter 10

  187

  Finished pages

  199

  Content

  design

  1

  Introduction

  2

  Sarah Richards

  Defining

  content design

  Content design means not limiting yourself to just words. Content on the web is often words, but not always. The point of content design is that you start with research to help you identify what your users actually need (which isn’t the same as what they say they want).

  Then instead of saying ‘How shall I write this?’, you say,

  ‘What content will best meet this need?’

  The answer might be words, but it might also be other things: pictures, diagrams, charts, links, calendars, a series of questions and answers, videos, addresses, maps, calculators, spreadsheets, printable documents, and many more besides.

  When your job is to decide which one of those, or which combination of several of them, meets the user’s need – that’s content design.

  A quick history

  of publishing

  Humans have been communicating for a long

  Introduction 3

  time – cave paintings can be dated back 40,000 years.

  The first writing systems are thought to have emerged in ancient Sumer (modern-day Iraq) around 3200 BC.

  Since then, humans have evolved, adapted, lost and revamped their communication techniques. But one thing has stayed the same: we want other people to consume our thoughts, feelings, goods and services, and we’ll adapt to make that happen.

  Fast-forward to today: the internet is a (relatively) new thing, and for the most part we’re still adapting to make best use of it. In the early days, many people assumed that publishing online just meant taking everything that already existed offline, on paper, and just shoving it on a website. (Some are still doing this.) But that approach doesn’t work well.

  Since developing paper, the printing press and books, the process of publishing was:

  ● writer writes

  ● editor edits

  ● printer prints

  Easy. All nicely defined in a lovely linear process.

  In the early days of the web, some online publishing worked like this:

  ● writer writes

  ● writer publishes (with or without editing or sign-off) That was brilliant. We could all publish our thoughts

  4

  Sarah Richards

  faster. We didn’t have lengthy subbing processes or month
s to wait for something to be designed and printed. We were reading faster, publishing faster, learning faster, becoming a community faster.

  As the search engines themselves got better, we had to work harder to make our websites stand out. The concept of search engine optimisation (SEO) was born, and many web content producers took it to heart.

  Online publishing in lots of places now looks like this:

  ● writer writes

  ● SEO team adds SEO keywords

  ● editor edits

  ● legal expert signs off

  ● publishing team publishes

  Which is much better. And to be fair, a lot of organisations do well with this process. But it has some flaws.

  Want vs need

  The ‘write, SEO, sub, publish’ type of publishing doesn’t necessarily take into account what users actually need. Sometimes, users don’t need to read anything.

  What a user wants and what they need might be two different things.

  For example, a person may want a quick, easy solution to a complicated debt problem.

  Introduction 5

  What they need, however, is a series of easy-to-follow steps to get them out of debt – which may not be quick or easy at all. It’s not what the person wants, but it is what they need.

  A content designer will think about the best possible way to deliver information to the indebted person.

  Perhaps that might mean using video, or an online debt repayments calculator. Those are pieces of content that might meet the need, but in many organisations, creating them will be the responsibility of a completely different team.

  So a content design approach will take that into account, and the work might involve building relationships with teams you’ve not worked with before.

  Business needs

  vs user needs

  A business usually needs money to run. Even if the goal is simply to help people, at some point almost all businesses need money to function.

  Sometimes what a user wants gets forgotten in a lot of pages saying what the business or organisation wants to say.

  I’ll show you how to keep your business and user needs in mind and how to tackle both together.

  6

  Sarah Richards

  What content

  designers are like

  There’s a lot of technical skill in content design.

  You have to know how to interpret analytical data, and how to put that data to good work. It can tell you things that help you plan your content. You have to be aware of all forms of communication that could be useful, and you have to know a lot about your audience to know what is right for them. We’ll go through it all in this book.

  I think good content designers:

  ● should be humble; they serve the audience

  ● are totally focused on user-centred content

  ● appreciate that no one can know everything

  ● are open to learning

  ● aren’t wedded to grammar rules they were taught in primary school. Language moves on and a good content designer moves on with it Humans learn, evolve and adapt and you need to adapt with them. Assume nothing, question everything and test until you are sure.

  Then go and do it again.

  Because that’s how content design works.

  Introduction 7

  Finding your way

  through this book

  This book is divided into 2 halves.

  The first 5 chapters are about preparatory work - doing research and going through the essential discovery phase.

  Chapters 6 to 10 are more practical, guiding you through the tasks you’ll need to complete one at a time.

  9

  Why content

  design matters

  10

  Sarah Richards

  A few years ago,

  I worked on a

  website that had a

  page designed to

  help people find

  their local GP.

  The problem was

  that most people

  don’t say ‘GP’, they

  say ‘doctor’. When

  they search on

  the web, they use

  ‘doctor’ there too.

  Why content design matters 11

  Users weren’t

  finding the right

  page on the website

  because it didn’t

  have the word

  ‘doctor’ on it.

  I changed the term

  and the page went

  from being in the

  bottom 50 for the

  whole site, to one

  of the top pages.

  That’s iterative

  content design

  in action.

  12

  Sarah Richards

  As so many

  organisations are

  still focused on

  what messages

  they want to push,

  rather than what

  their users need...

  Why content design matters 13

  why do you

  need to put so

  much effort into

  your content?

  14

  Sarah Richards

  Organisations like

  Apple, Amazon

  and Google take

  research and user

  behaviour seriously.

  Why content design matters 15

  They are also

  global, very

  succe ssful

  brands people

  talk about.

  They are successful

  because they make

  people happy, which

  includes creating

  websites that are

  easy to use and meet

  people’s needs.

  16

  Sarah Richards

  There are billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions &

  billions of

  pages on the internet.

  Why content design matters 17

  Unless you are

  a unique entity

  that people have

  no choice but to

  deal with

  the UK government, for instance you have

  competitors.

  To do better than your

  competitors, you need

  smarter content.

  18

  Sarah Richards

  Not

  more

  content,

  Why content design matters 19

  smarter

  content

  20

  Sarah Richards

  Writing digital

  content is a skill.

  People won’t find

  your website because

  your design is funky.

  They’ll use words

  they are thinking

  about and pick you

  from a swarm of other

  results offered up

  by search engines.

  You need to stand out

  on the results page.

  Why content design matters 21

  That’s why content

  design is important:

  it helps you stand

  out in a world where

  everyone wants to

  stand out.

  Standing out comes

  down to three things:

  • push vs pull content

  • trust

  • ease of use

  Let’s look at each one of those in turn.

  22

  Sarah Richards

  Push vs pull

  content

  Ther
e are two types of writing for communications: push and pull.

  Push content

  If you see a poster while waiting for a bus, you are choosing to look at it, but it is there. It’s in front of you.

  The effort is minimal. Your eyes just happen to hit it.

  Similarly, if you publish a press release and send it to every journalist you know, that’s push content. Content is being shoved out there for someone to pick up.

  Pull content

  When you go to a website, you are pulling the content.

  To get to a page at all, you have to decide what you want to read about, get some words in mind, type them into a search engine, choose from the results, and then get to a page to consume the content. You might see a link on another page or Twitter and decide you want to follow that link to read the content. All of that takes effort. All of that means you actually have to do something. That’s pull content. You pull the content towards you.

  The most important skill for writing on the web is

  Why content design matters 23

  turning push content (what you want to say) into pull content (what your audience wants to read).

  Any push content can be turned to pull. All you need to do is find what your audience actually wants. The more pull your content has, the more successful you will be. For example:

  Push:

  Look at this cool new phone! Buy it!

  Pull:

  This cool new phone makes your life easier and puts the entire world in your pocket. And it’s only £500.

  Books would be boring if there were no thought-pro-voking prose. And adverts wouldn’t persuade us to buy anything if they just said: ‘Trainers. Keep your feet dry.

  Available in two colours.’

  But for either type of communication to be successful, it has to be what the intended audience wants or needs at the time they see it.

  Trust

  If your audience doesn’t trust you, they won’t interact with you – it’s as simple as that. While you gain trust from your reputation, track record and marketing on the web, trust can come from:

  24

  Sarah Richards

  ● design (does it look like the real deal or is it a scam site?)

  ● brand awareness (does it match your brand? If the Ministry of Justice looked and felt like Ministry of Sound, people wouldn’t trust it, would they?)