If you’re looking to undergo a full website redesign, or if you’re simply trying to update your brand messaging, it’s essential to perform a content audit. Analyzing your current content strategy is an easy way to give your website a facelift and it provides the ideal opportunity to assess the tone of voice for your redesign.
Since you already have a website, you have the advantage of being able to use your existing content as a jumping-off point. Take the opportunity to improve and update it to reflect your website redesign goals.
Step 1: Take Stock of Your Content Inventory
A content audit involves compiling a list of all the content pieces on your site along with information about these pieces in terms of their value to your company. A good place to start is by generating a list of your website’s pages either by manual input into a spreadsheet, or using a crawling tool.
Next, analyze the worth of each page or content piece based on some of the following criteria:
- Number of page visits. This could be a daily average, total, or both.
- Topics. Label each piece of content by category. This will help you determine if and where gaps may lie in terms of subject matter.
- Buying stage. You should also categorize each piece based on its stage in the buying process. (Top, Middle or Bottom of the Funnel) Whenever relevant, note how a page contributes to conversions.
- Shares. Note how many times a piece has been shared across social.
In addition, you can determine the relevance of your content by looking at bounce rates: the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing a single page. High bounce rates imply visitors are not finding the content they came for — another aspect that you may need to address in your overall website redesign.
Step 2: Think about Your Voice
When you think about your content, you have to think about how you want to speak to your customer. Are you funny, professional, light-hearted, intelligent? Your content is your opportunity to engage with users and change how they perceive your company. Your brand messaging and value proposition should be written in such a way that visitors new to your company website can immediately understand who you are and what you do. As you produce new content, keep things clear and simple and write in a voice that speaks to your desired customer.
Use your brand voice to determine a multi-platform brand message, one that will personify your company’s online presence and can be replicated beyond your website to email campaigns and social media channels.
Step 3: Take Action!
You can use the information gleaned from your web audit in two ways. First, you can determine which content pieces and topics are most important to your brand and which can be removed. If you have three ebooks about a topic and no one is downloading them – it’s time to try a new strategy. Secondly, your audit will help you determine the new content that you need to create to move forward on your redesign.
You should have clear goals for your website redesign, and your content audit will likely help to generate a few new goals as you may uncover trends and patterns about your website that you failed to notice before. As you move forward with your website, your business, and your content marketing strategy, be sure to keep tabs on the performance of your content. Keep writing about topics that provide value for your potential and current customers and change anything that seems to continuously underperform.
Follow these steps to manage your content and you will be well on your way to a successful website redesign!
