Digital.gov Guide

Understanding design goals

This guide provides research methods and approaches to help teams establish design direction.
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Content goals

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    Method 1: Content audits

    What

    A content audit lists and analyzes all the content on an existing website or app. This can include pages, files, videos, audio or other data.

    Why

    Content audits help to identify:

    • Content that needs revision in new versions of a website
    • Who is responsible for content
    • How often you should update it
    • What role a particular piece of content plays for users

    Content audits often are done along with site mapping to provide a detailed analysis of the site, its content, and content gaps and opportunities.

    Tip

    Crawling your website is a good way to start a content audit. This provides you with a comprehensive list of all documents in your website. Then, you can use this information to identify opportunities and gaps in your content. 

    How to do it

    1. Create an inventory of content on your website. Navigate through the site from the home page. For repeated items like blog posts, consider capturing a sample of content. Note the following details about every piece of content:
      • Title used in the site’s navigation for that page
      • Title displayed on the page or item itself
      • URL
      • Parent page
    2. Identify the main entry points for the users. This could be external marketing, the homepage, a microsite, or another page.
    3. From each entry point, trace the pages and tasks a user moves through until they address their need.
    4. For every piece of content they might come across on that task flow, note:
      • Authors: who wrote or created the page
      • Content owners: who ensures its credibility
      • How often or when it was last updated
      • Qualitative assessment of what to change to better address your identified user need
    5. Evaluate your audit. Identify gaps in coverage, redundant or outdated content, and content that does not help you meet your goals.

     

    Content debt

    Content debt – like technical debt – can undermine the long-term health of a website or application. More importantly, content debt can make it harder for the user to understand and use your site. Key to reducing content debt is knowing the state of your content through a content audit.

     

    Learn more with An introduction to content strategy.

     

    Time required

    3 to 8 hours

     

    Method 2: Site maps

    What

    A site map shows how pages are organized, especially their hierarchy.

    Why

    Use site maps to:

    • Audit existing websites by assessing its structure and content
    • Help you plan and organize the contents of a new website before wireframing and building it
    • Index sites with search engines

    Site mapping is often done along with content audits to provide a complete picture of the site, its content, and gaps and opportunities.

    How to do it

    1. List each page of a website or section.
    2. Arrange the list into a hierarchical diagram. Focus on the logical relationships between pages.
      • If you are evaluating an existing website, focus more on these relationships than on the URL structure.
      • If some pages function as sub-pages to another, the site map should reflect that.
    3. Use the diagram to guide choices about things like information architecture and URL structures.
    4. Publish the information as an XML sitemap to help search engines discover, crawl, and index the content on your website.

    Time required

    2 to 3 hours

    Overview Design challenges