Content Organisation: More Than Just a Party Trick

So you finally got around to creating a website for your business.

But you have so much you want your website to say… How do you separate it all out?

Don’t panic.

This is a good starting point.

Let’s imagine the goal of your website is to provide information about your non-profit organisation.

So you aren’t looking to make sales or something similar; it’s just about educating people.

This means we can essentially forget about calls-to-action (although you will use them to an extent in order to direct people around your website), and focus entirely on the content.

And the key to making your content modern and easy-to-read… is organisation.

Once you’ve organised all the content you have gathered, you’ll get a better idea of how the website should be laid out. The website will practically create itself.

But How Do You Organise Your Content?

There are a number of ways you could break it up depending on your organisation. However, we would advise you focus on the main thing your website visitors will be searching Google for.

You want to make this information easy to find on your website; don’t let them get frustrated!

Example: 

From a Drug Awareness organisation, people will probably want to know… the basics about drugs and drug-use, and potentially how to stop taking drugs.

And just like that, you’ve created your main menu titles!

Don’t worry if they don’t feel quite right, they’re not set in stone at the minute.

I find it can be easier to just get started, and then go back and edit it later. This approach may or may not work for you, but just have a go and see!

Think of the three menu titles we created above as the three main branches of your website. All of your content is going to branch out from these three starting points!

Simple.

And don't forget...
Always remember to define your website goals at the start, like we did in this blog.

As an example, we defined the website goal as ‘providing information’, but you can get more specific like ‘helping drug-users overcome addiction through providing free information’.

Once you’ve defined your goal, it should be easier to work out what information will be necessary and what might be a bit superfluous for each of your branches.

After a lot of writing, editing and re-arrranging, your final menu may end up quite different from your initial plan... 

Bonus Menu title tip: It should be immediately obvious what information will be contained within each menu item; avoid vague titles! In the example above, you can see that we have;

1. How We Can Help - Information on how we (the organisation) can help you
2. Drugs: The Basics - Basic information on drugs
3. Addiction: The Basics - Basic information on addiction
4. Where are we? - Information on location
5. Contact Us - Contact Information

As your website starts gathering visitors, you may eventually rethink your content structure, based on how people are searching your website. This is great, because you're refining it to what people really want.

We used the Crazy Egg Heatmapping tool on one of our clients’ websites, and discovered their ‘View Gallery’ button was being clicked ten times more than any other button. Based on this and other stats, we had a rethink of the website design and layout, and will be launching their re-imagined website soon! 

But this is something we couldn’t have predicted happening in the initial content layout stages.

Most of the time with websites, you just have to commit to trying something and see how people react.

Let us know how you organise your content; do you have any useful tips for someone getting started?

And if you want to take your website further, why not check out our blog on developing purposes for each page of your website; a fool-proof way to keep things to the point!

Creating Websites People Love

With Vital Hike

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