Is the content answering a question that our customers are asking?

Council websites can be cluttered with pages there is no demand for. This wastes officer time spent writing and maintaining them, and customer time spent wading through them to get to what they need.

Irrelevant content makes relevant information harder to find by making it difficult to navigate to and search for.

Could you justify the publication of your page if you were asked?

You should consider the following…

Who’s going to read it?

Pages should relate to questions or queries asked repeatedly by customers. Your audience should be clear to you as you write. Ask:

• Does your page relate to a specific council service?
• Does it meet the needs of the customer, as well as the council?
• Is the potential audience large enough to justify publishing the information?
• Is the potential audience able or likely to access the information via the internet?
• Is there a statutory requirement to publish this information?

Why does your audience need to know?

Information gained from a website should enable, equip or inform a customer to take an action. It’s rare to find anyone that will browse council web content for fun! Think laterally about their reasons for visiting your page, and gear your content toward those reasons.

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All content in this guide is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated.