While Creating New Web Content, Don’t Forget to Manage the Old Web Content
Things move quickly on the internet, that’s no great revelation for most people. In an effort to keep up with email marketing campaigns, social media posts, and blog articles it’s easy to produce something and then forget about it. For email and social this often doesn’t create a problem but on a website, relics of the past can cause confusion.
Trainers, consultants, and professional coaches often work on a project and move on or have it transition to a new initiative. If project information is on the website it’s important that it reflects the current state rather than a past state.
A company we recently met with was experiencing a problem where their users were regularly complaining that project information shared with them was dated or inaccurate. This company was frustrated because they had instituted a custom email campaign specifically to keep users up to date. The person responsible for the communications said, “Honestly, I’m spoon feeding them the information at this point. What more can I do?”
After doing a review of the communication plan, we realized that the emails were actually highlighting the problem. The emails would link back to the website that had a project specific section. While the new content was there, dated content from the project’s inception was also prevalent. There was no clear definition of what information was current and much of it was outdated and no longer relevant.
After redesigning the structure of the project section and archiving old information, the complaints abated.
Websites tend to grow organically but there isn’t always a system for review and retirement of outdated information. If you find that users are struggling to understand your messages, perhaps a review and trim down of the website might clear up the misunderstandings.