From Redesign to Relaunch: Creating a Content Production Plan for Your Website

Content production is often overlooked during website redesigns, but it shouldn’t be!

Content is the conversation you’re having with customers. It helps them complete tasks, whether they’re accessing essential government services or buying from an online store. Effective content saves time and resources, empowers self-service, and improves the customer experience.

Content Production Scope and Planning

When maintaining your website, content production probably feels easy if you have content governance set up. During a website redesign, however, you often have to make choices about your content. You might need to reorganize pages after changing the navigation structure or information architecture. Or you might find old, unused content during a content audit.

Determining Scope

One common issue in content production is trying to do too much during a website redesign. Plan for success by being realistic about which pages you'll update and which you'll build from scratch. Decide what updates can wait until after the launch.

At Anthro-Tech, we help our clients divide content production into manageable steps. First, we determine the scope of the redesign. Are we updating the website only, or are we including applications as well? Often, it makes sense to update the website before applications.

If we’re redesigning the website, are we improving the entire site or just specific sections, like a filterable list of products or services? Clarifying this helps us determine the overall scope.

For the Washington State Parks website redesign, we completed content production in phases.  We updated the content first, planning to update linked files, like PDF maps of parks, later. This allowed editors and park rangers to focus on making pages more accessible, usable, and searchable.

Make a Production Plan and Get Team Members Aligned

Once you decide on how much content to update, start making a plan for updating or creating content that you can use to get approval. We recommend documenting: 

• Content Inventory: List which pages need updating or creating.
• Team Roles: Choose people to write, edit, review, and approve content.
• Project Timeline: Divide the work into phases with deadlines for each.
• Resource Allocation: Estimate the time and effort required for each task.
• Communication Strategy: Determine how to inform the team about progress and expectations.
• Content Training: Plan training on accessibility, clear writing, and using the content management system.

Once you document your content production plan, it’s time to get approval from the executive team.

Content Production Phase

Work with managers and executives to share the vision for your website redesign and why content production is important to it. Explain what resources you need from them and what the time commitment is. 

If you're unsure how to get approval from executives, especially in larger organizations or agencies, we recommend working with an Organizational Change Manager to guide the process and build agreement among stakeholders.

Empower Your Team: Content Creation and Management

With executive approval secured and your content team ready, it's time to get started! 

Begin with a kickoff meeting to help everyone understand the project's goals and expectations. After the kickoff, train them on plain language and accessibility. We’ve gathered our best government plain language tips in this post, but you’ll find it is relevant for private organizations too! 

When it comes to accessibility, content creators can be very important to your redesigned website’s success in meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Teach editors to use alt-text, split up their content with headings that are structured for accessibility, and avoid accessibility issues like formatting content in tables. 

Keep your project moving with weekly check-ins to track progress, address challenges, and avoid falling behind. Offer ongoing support through office hours, clear guidelines, and regular updates. Remember, a motivated and informed team is key to a successful launch.

Can’t Get Approval for Content Production?

Here are some common examples of pushback on content production and some tips for preparing the resources you need. 

“There’s no time to make a content production plan.”

Skipping a plan can delay your website launch. Without a strategy, content often slows down other work. Develop a detailed plan from the start and hold weekly progress meetings to identify and address risks early. Align your team on content priorities to avoid conflicts and ensure updates support your project vision and goals. Planning now will save you from costly delays later. 

“We don’t have the resources to update our content.”

Redesigning your website without putting resources into updating content can lead you to miss out on important conversations with your customers. Your website is your first line of communication, so plan to make a good first impression with useful and usable content. Plus, updating content now will save resources by improving self-service options and reducing future support costs.

“Rewriting our content in plain language would oversimplify things.”

We often hear: "Our content is for experts; we don’t want to oversimplify it." But plain language benefits everyone, including experts. It makes information easier to understand, helping customers complete tasks more efficiently. Need some backup? Check out this Nielsen Norman Group article on plain language and see why it works for all audiences.