The document discusses the challenges of managing a large amount of content on a government website. It describes how liverpool.gov.uk originally had over 4,000 pages but only 200 pages received 80% of traffic. A new strategy was developed to centralize content management, focus on the most important user tasks, simplify the site's voice, and enable oversight of performance. The new site launched in 6 months with only 400 pages and led to improved online services and a reduction in offline inquiries to the council. Key lessons included acknowledging political challenges, using evidence to guide changes, and focusing resources on high-value content that matters most to users.

1. Wrestling The Content
Monster
How liverpool.gov.uk was tamed

2. Us
liverpool.direct
Public & Private

3. Me
@conormoody

4. What use is strategy if you
can’t implement?
could, should, might, perhaps, one
day, longer-
term, consider, asses, talk, discuss, revie
w, compare, benchmark

5. Or… Don’t save the world

6. Wrestling with large content
• Looking at what you’ve got
• Where do you want to be?
• Building a realistic strategy to get there
• Having a plan
• What you get at the end
• Things we learnt along the way

7. A long hard look in the ugly mirror

9. Content-heavy pages
Not very
relevant to
the user

10. Lots of “what we do”
The important thing is here
Whatever……

11. Off the (gov) shelf IA

12. How was it getting used?

13. Over 4000 pages on the site
of traffic
%
went to just 200 of them

14. “no one” reads the news
• Less than 2% of site traffic
• 10 news items took 64% of news traffic
• The 10 weren’t really ‘news’

15. strategies, policies and plans
none formed part of a top 20 user tasks

16. And the organisation ?

17. Our cms users
• Not unusual for a council….
• Devolve precious asset to:
– Anyone who has a PC
• Half day training
• Not content professionals
• Have fulltime job
• No incentive to reduce contact
• If measured, then wrong metric (volume, compliance
etc)

18. Our cms usage
Customers want:
• 260 trained • 160 did something
• 20 performed 70% of all • Activity not related to Top
activity Tasks

19. Organisation v customer
Homepage space allocation (%) If pure demand was followed (%)
News
Jobs
Brand
Do-it online
Popular Links
Images
Planning Rubbish
Leisure Search
Contact Promo Benefits My Neighbourhood
The Bene
Contact Council fits
New
Libraries Transport Business
s
Site Elements
(Navigation, Whitespace, etc) Education
The Rest

20. Me
@kevinjump

21. Reality check
The organisation and the customer didn’t agree.

22. A pragmatic strategy

23. A pragmatic strategy
• focus on the important things
• control the message
• get sustainable management

24. The plan
How to go about it all

25. The plan
• Centralise content management
• Refocus efforts based on user demand
• Simplify the voice of the site
• Enable oversight on performance

26. Practicalities

27. Site rebuild in progress
Technically; to much was broken

28. Segmentation of content

29. A focus on IA

30. Communication to the business

31. Results
New site in 6 months.

33. Results
• 4000 is now 400
• Measure contact on the site
• Evidence based change improvement model
(content / design / service delivery)
• Impact on business
– Online up
– Offline down

34. Lessons learnt
1. we are a large organisation with lots of politics

35. A devolved content model makes it
hard to focus
Unless you have serious resources…

36. Do strategy, but don’t major on it

37. Evidence rules!

38. Assume authority
You are the subject-matter expert

39. Don’t save the world
Give yourself something to do tomorrow

40. Content has a cost
With limited resources, focus on the
stuff that matters