Content Design: Giving users what they need, when AND how they need it

[00:00:05] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome to the No Script Show. In the last episode, we talked about creating a website owner's manual. This is an editable document that is both an online brand guideline and a checklist for creating a website and online presence. In this episode, we're looking at content design, which is a relatively new discipline, and it's one of the main pillars.

Of the website owner's manual, we'll talk about what it is, why it matters, what are its core principles, and how a website owner can apply them. You can find all of the show notes and resources, which we mentioned in this episode at No Script Show. Forward slash three zero. So 30. And if you're watching on YouTube, the link for that will be in the first comment just below the like and subscribe buttons.

And as always, I'm joined by David Wamsley. Hello, how are you doing?

[00:00:57] David Waumsley: Hello. Thanks Nathan. Yeah, I'm very well. I thought this year we were gonna be just doing a kind of content on building websites. That's, that was the plan. That was the plan. Start with that. Yeah. Start with that, plumber site, which we started there, and then we moved into this idea of this kind of owner's manual and I'm pleased because it's.

The show I think was always about looking outside of the world that we knew, which was kind of WordPress and page builders and all that, and seeing what was going on more generally in the web and the building. And so it started off as off with the kind of modern CSS. And then, as soon as we.

Got into that and that's changed so much because of browser interoperability. Then suddenly I think our content started moving towards, wait, we ought to try and look at the HTML before we move on to the CSS.

[00:01:50] Nathan Wrigley: Right?

[00:01:50] David Waumsley: So we've moved into that and now I think I've gone one step back even further to say, hang on.

Perhaps we ought to decide why we're actually putting this HGML out in the first place and what I think it is. Yeah. And I, so I'm quite pleased. So I think our content will. We will take this kind of idea, this concept of a website owner's manual, and then we should cover all aspects of this kind of profession, I think one way or another with this.

Yes. So yeah,

that's,

[00:02:16] Nathan Wrigley: I'm gonna rename you David derailed warmly. that's, that's what's happening. I'm

[00:02:22] David Waumsley: totally makes sense a bit because I've gone off. So many different tangents. I said, oh, I love it. The show's gonna be about this and it's gonna be about, but I think I finally got that. We've just stepped back enough to get back to some of the fundamentals.

Yeah.

[00:02:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. That's lovely. Okay, shall I put the slides up? Would that be helpful?

[00:02:37] David Waumsley: Yeah, please do. Yeah.

[00:02:38] Nathan Wrigley: Are you on the correct one for now? Let's see if we can find it.

[00:02:41] David Waumsley: Yeah, I am. Yeah,

[00:02:42] Nathan Wrigley: we. Go content design, giving users what they need, when and how they need it. It's a lordy claim, David. It's a, there's a lot in that.

[00:02:52] David Waumsley: I'll move to the next slide here, which I just got. so the website owner's manual, which we featured, started working on it, is working in progress at the moment. But, so in that it's going to be a link and hopefully this episode will be one of the resources that I can link to on, on the preface.

People who are listening to this won't be able to see the slides, but showing the first few pages of the website owner's manual. And there's a selection of standards there, which I thought we would cover now. And these are, if you like, these are gonna form the pillars of the manual. They give it some academic weight, so it'll, talk about, where these kind of philosophies and these ideas and standards come from.

Okay. We've already talked about one of those, which is, indie web, which actually turned out to be our most. Popular video so far. Oh

[00:03:43] Nathan Wrigley: okay. That's interesting.

[00:03:44] David Waumsley: yeah, by far. so I dunno why people tuned into that. So it's probably of interest. And this one is obviously content design, which is a, fairly new thing, which is really about meeting.

actual needs. So we'll do something on the others, which you can't see. Probably over here. I'm, I dunno if you see my little pointer, I

[00:04:04] Nathan Wrigley: can actually see your little pointer. Yeah. you're hovering over the preface section, aren't you? The standards?

[00:04:08] David Waumsley: Yeah. So I put standards, so we'll have links in the manual that will go to the EASE videos as some other resources.

But, in there, there is, Content design in, the indie web inclusive design, which is all about designing for all and reaching more people web standards, which is about building resilient sites and keeping the web interoperable and open. And then there'll be, I think we should do a, video as well on agile development, which is really about.

Kind of being adaptable if you like to change, which is always going on when it comes to technology and not wasting money.

[00:04:42] Nathan Wrigley: yeah.

[00:04:42] David Waumsley: Yeah. So that's just to put that in context. Let's move on to the actual slides. I'm gonna hand it over mostly to you.

[00:04:48] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So we are on the content design slide. Shall I just go through the bullet points?

Would that be helpful?

[00:04:55] David Waumsley: Yes, please.

[00:04:56] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. first of all, we're looking at a picture of Sarah Winters and David's covering her up now. Sorry about that, Sarah. so content design, this is a discipline created by Sarah Richards, who is now Sarah Winters whilst transforming the Gov UK website from hundreds of government websites into a single resource being a user of those websites.

we'll get onto that, but. Blooming good. it has been adopted by other governments such as the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Facebook or Meta, I suppose more correctly, formally switched to content design, embedding content designers across every product team and a whole bunch of other giant companies like Shopify, Atlassian.

Apple, Google, Microsoft have also followed suit. I actually didn't know about the, the sort of cascade of the government in the UK doing this and then the US, Australia, and New Zealand kind of tweaking their operations in the same way. That's curious.

[00:05:56] David Waumsley: Yeah, I think the Cov UK site, has really changed the industry, at least at the high end.

I think, for most people, building small business websites, probably not even aware of the sort of impact of it and. So content design itself is, it's a formal discipline that's pioneered by, gov UK or the government digital services as they are. So they've been adopted, as you say, by the, the us their digital services, as well as the Australian government.

And, I'll probably mention this later as it go, as we go on through the slides, but, Really, I think without Gov UK we wouldn't have got the growth of things like Agile as well. this kind of new approach to building websites, very user focus and adaptable way of building websites. We used to see them as projects that had a set amount of money to be paid on 'em.

And that was it. You planned it and that was done.

[00:06:56] Nathan Wrigley: I didn't realise that. So the Gov UK website was a sort of pioneer in that whole field of Agile, was it? That was one of the.

[00:07:02] David Waumsley: Yeah, Agile goes back 20. I mean we're going back to 2013 when this started with it, but it was such a big break to find someone like the UK government of all people who are.

Generally would expect with governments, they want to know what they're paying for upfront with public money. Yeah. They want a set price for everything. And when you accept agile, you accept the fact that there is no actual end price for this one. Yes. You just keep reiterating as much as is needed to do the job and hopefully it will be an A saving in the long term rather than these projects.

And so to take that kind of risk to move. for a big organisation like the UK government to do that was major in backing up, if you like. Other people do it agile and now, most companies, I think, who've got serious online presence will use Agile as a way of developing their sites.

[00:07:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. It, I guess it stems from the fact that the web has gone from something which was nice to have.

Into something which is certainly in the, in terms of the UK government website is necessary to have, isn't it? It's like a utility, basically. There's so much functionality of normal life paying taxes and booking, driving tests as we'll see in a minute, that kind of thing. It's moved over there and so in a sense it becomes like another branch of government, which in the UK we have this thing called the NHS, which is, the health service.

it doesn't have an end. there's no pot of gold which runs out it, every year there's a further spend on the NHS, and next year there's more money, and next year there's more money. And so it's like that, it's just now a thing which you have to pay for each and every year. anyway, sorry, I digress.

[00:08:45] David Waumsley: No, it's fine. the other points that I need to cover is just that the Gov UK replaced over 300 individual agencies that were working. they did it over a 18 month period. So it finished in late 2014 and it merged thousands of websites. And, I'm just bringing it up on the screen here.

Yeah,

[00:09:07] Nathan Wrigley: I see it.

[00:09:09] David Waumsley: so the argument from Sarah Winters was, That, with. Kind of government sites. If they were complex, then users need to turn to third party copycat sites to be able to do things. which she says, I quoted her is that this made a tax on the poor or the confused. And her prime example for pushing this forward was booking a driving test, something which Nathan, you were telling me you just doesn't actually feel.

[00:09:36] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, literally did it like a few weeks ago for my youngest son, and it took minutes, like minutes from Googling. I, I didn't know where the URL was or anything like that, from googling it to completing it, paying for it, having it booked, and it's in the calendar. Four minutes maybe, something like that.

Yeah, I had to have a few minutes lying around like my Dr my son's driving, licence number. But really beyond that, everything was just so self-explanatory. It was dead simple. Yeah. Breath of fresh air, actually. And also what's curious about that is now the bar that I've set myself for this website.

It's always simple.

[00:10:15] David Waumsley: yes.

[00:10:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, cool.

[00:10:18] David Waumsley: No, it's fine. what I was gonna say is that wasn't really one of our examples that previously that's what you would need to do, is that you would need to go to a third party most of the time. Or most people were to book the driver test, which was more expensive because you're paying this third party where now, 'cause everyone will go to the Gov UK site.

And we were talking about this because you've been getting a visa for India and that's been quite a, hassle and I know. Being in India at the moment that obviously they haven't adopted this process here. So literally everything you do, you go through a third party here. If you want a visa, if you want your sort of ID cards that we have here, the sort of, ration cards as well that they still have over here.

You do everything by third parties because the websites are just a jumble of

These

[00:11:08] David Waumsley: different sites.

[00:11:09] Nathan Wrigley: yeah.

[00:11:12] David Waumsley: on the slide here, I've just got some examples on it, and it's because I was listening to a, an interview that she did, Sarah Winters, that is, and she was mentioning in that, that there were before, three and a half, 3000.

Government websites that were put into one, so it's not just these 300 different

[00:11:31] Nathan Wrigley: wow

[00:11:32] David Waumsley: bodies. and most of 'em had their own teams and one that she mentioned before. So I looked them up and I've got 'em on the screen for people who can see it. There's one called Beefy and Lamby. Dot co. Your uk, it's now deceased.

Do you remember this at all?

[00:11:46] Nathan Wrigley: No, but when I saw this slide, it made me chuckle that, what the heck was the government paying for this for? I can get it, but equally it's like they've got some famous people to do cooking,

[00:12:01] David Waumsley: but not

[00:12:01] Nathan Wrigley: even

[00:12:01] David Waumsley: the

[00:12:02] Nathan Wrigley: famous chefs to do cooking. Anyway, go on. You just,

[00:12:05] David Waumsley: no.

It's, it is eighties cricket stars. It's kind both them and, Alan Lamb and honestly. The, it's worth going to, YouTube and looking up, beefy and lamby and listening to some of these old, 'cause it comes from the TV ads that they used to do where they were trying to promote quality lamb and beef to have all at the time, and they really are so saucy British postcard type stuff.

The so real double entendres in them. It's hysterical. Yeah. But yeah, absolutely. The point that she was making, why are the UK government giving you, because they needed to fill up this website. They're giving you recipes to what to do with this land. Yeah. And this beef that they're promoting.

It's

[00:12:47] Nathan Wrigley: three and a half thousand though. That's so interesting. So that's three and a half thousand, maybe not three and a thousand Exactly. But many thousands of independent agencies. All with their own sort of quirky design language, ways of doing things, tech stack, the whole thing is a mess. I suppose you had to go through that though.

the internet came along, nobody knew how it would need be needed by the population at general for booking a driving test as an example. yeah. And now we've reached, the point where it's matured enough that we now know that this sort of stuff really is best handled by one entity. I assume it is anyway, if done right.

[00:13:28] David Waumsley: And the other thing about GV UK is that it's the only website to date who's won the prestigious design Museum's Design of the year award, in which it won back in 2013, even before the job had been completed. and I like this, this is the way that I could. Because in this present age, we, particularly with ai, our AI will create you this wonderful looking website.

I think sometimes we just still get stuck in this idea that websites are these pretty pictures online rather than something which actually helps people with their lives and communicates, useful information. And I think, you could tell when you look at this site, you couldn't be more.

Bare bones, but it's more useful than say, beefy and lamby. When we're looking at

[00:14:16] Nathan Wrigley: these two comparisons, you are right. So we're looking at a, page, which is basically a white canvas with black text of varying sizes, some links and a few buttons. But the point is it's, you don't, I don't need. I don't need images and fun overlapping kind of containers and CSS grid and this, that and the other thing.

I just need to know how to book a driving test and that apparently can be done in five or six steps and it makes that You know that case right at the beginning and it, it, really didn't occur to me how profoundly great that website was until you started Explaining it in these videos and now I get it.

Now I'm appreciative of it and it's beauty is in its simplicity without a doubt.

[00:15:02] David Waumsley: Yeah. It's usability.

[00:15:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:05] David Waumsley: Let's go on. so yeah, I'll leave the slide for you to read out. I should explain what it is. Okay.

[00:15:11] Nathan Wrigley: All

[00:15:11] David Waumsley: right.

[00:15:11] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, here we go. we require a different way of thinking. So following on, a little bit from what we were just talking about.

Here's three bullet points for you. Content is not written first in this process and design. Second, both are both happen at the same time together, and it is all shaped by evidence. And the format. So that could be words, videos, a tool table or nothing. is a design decision, not a default. You'll have to explain that one to me.

And the third one, the goal is to meet a genuine user need. I think we just covered a little bit, not to fill a page or promote the organisation. Yeah. Okay. So let's tackle those, but particularly number two is confusing to me.

[00:15:57] David Waumsley: Okay. Yeah. I think, it all clicked with me, what she was saying with this.

and I think it makes context, it makes sense in context to her history. So she's at the point of Sarah Winters, who's come up with this idea that we should be doing content design is the fact that she was a copywriter, but originally she went into design and she was doing copywriting.

So when you've got this job. Bring it together, all of this copy from all of these different sites to put it in there. You realise that it doesn't really make sense to have this, and then you design over the top. So this is the problem I've been having recently and why it clicked with me is because as a reaction to coming from page builders and templates, I've been keen to get back to designing.

Two content. So I now recently been saying, we need the content, we need good HTML, and then we design over the top of this. But in actual reality, you're doing two things at the same time with it because you already know that you are making design, decisions. A couple of episodes ago, I did that kind of single page website for Paul The plumber.

Yeah, the plumber. I was indicating that if you wrote the text down in a normal thing, then you can style it and you are done. But actually there's a bit of a cheat in that because I already knew, because I had the design, because I'm the designer and the copywriter, I already knew that I was going to put this hide and reveal with this summary and details section in there.

So I think what this is saying here is that you can't separate the content. from the design because the way that you might want to give that content, you want it in its simplest form. Yeah. And to that, degree, you need to understand design. You need to know that you can make this one sentence huge, or that you can put things into lists or that you can hide and reveal certain stuff.

You need to know that. So

[00:17:53] Nathan Wrigley: that's a, really easy thing to say, isn't it? But quite hard to make the shift. Into actually implementing that because the temptation is always to go for one or the other, get this pixel, pixel perfect magazine style, layout. And then, oh, darn it, the, the textbook has been supplied by the, client doesn't fit so we'll reduce the font size a bit and in it will go, I will be very happy.

But if you do it the other way around, then you get the text and then you've got to worry about it fitting in that government website, They've got the perfect. They, fixed it perfectly by just basically obliterating design. You know that there is design there, but it's very minimal.

It's basically text, and so the text is front and centre. It's everything. So there's no real imagery or anything like that they've got to worry about. So they've made it easier for themselves in that scenario, but I can imagine that there'd be. There'd be collisions with this, approach at some point.

But that's the whole point of the modern web is that you can adapt your designs based upon the size of everything. the size of the text can map to the size of the viewport and things like that.

[00:19:04] David Waumsley: Yeah, and I think, on that second point that, the format, you need to, if somebody, if you have.

If you consider there is content design, and that's important at all stages through, the development of a website. And even as it keeps changing that, that should always be there, present it, it does make sense because sometimes, you as a copywriter, it would be pointless. So just writing out when you would be saying no, a table or, a chart.

Yeah. Or something would convey this information much better than just words. Even though, 95% of the web. Words, but sometimes, it wants,

okay,

[00:19:43] Nathan Wrigley: I think I'm following what you were talking about there then. So it's the not a default bit at the end, which I've now understood.

Okay, thank you.

[00:19:50] David Waumsley: that's really what it is. And let me move on to the next

[00:19:53] Nathan Wrigley: slide, which is,

[00:19:54] David Waumsley: yeah.

[00:19:54] Nathan Wrigley: Shall I read those ones out as well? Yes, please. So this really is an exploration of why it may matter. So most websites are written inside out, reflecting what the organisation wants to say. Content design flips that.

Starts with what users are actually trying to do. Let me pause and think about that for a moment. Yes. Okay, great. So three bullet points. The first one, we create content because there is a real user need for it, not because it feels like something we should have that's harder than it sounds, especially if you've got clients breathing down your neck.

Sorry, I'll keep going. we choose the right format for the job, whether that is a short paragraph, a list, a video, or a di single direct answer. The final one, we treat content as a live thing that can be improved, pruned, removed, whatever, when it stops serving users. Okay.

[00:20:44] David Waumsley: Yeah. Yeah. So this is again, flipping it.

And that of course, that's what Gov UK is known for, is being user focused. so everything is put through that lens and there's nothing new about this kind of content design in a way because it's already there in things that people are observing, SEO and UX design anyway. And you could say it is UX design, a lot of it, but I think what sort of makes it different is that, certainly with SEO.

Yeah, you will probably look for content gaps, but you're probably unlikely to be thinking about how you're going to be removing data that is no longer of use. Yeah. So if you get an SEO, they're not going to be doing that. And with a UX design or something, they're going to make what content comes to them easier to consume in their design.

They're gonna be saying, okay, this is the written word I've got from Sarah, and I'll make it beautiful. But they're not, it doesn't feel like it's their remit to be able to question the validity of whether that. Actual data was needed in the first place, whether it should be on the site. And that's in way where this comes at it, because it's, more brutal than that.

It takes you back further and says, nah, does the user need this? Do they need all of that?

[00:21:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yes.

[00:21:58] David Waumsley: Yeah. Okay. And, if they don't need it any longer, take it away. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what's different. And and we are used to saying, oh, we need to give them this. This is what we, you know about us.

But, if we want to, if we want to serve our customers, we actually have to. Think about what the customer's needs are, don't we? Rather than

[00:22:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. That's, so in, and that is a conversation that I basically never had. I was far too cowardly to, to push back on what I was told to deliver. I just, yeah, I'll do that.

And, and it, but it's good to have that prism in your head to know that's a skill that you ought to be able to deploy back to the client, to tell them, do you really need that? Yeah. It's not really serving your users. It might look flashy and lovely, but. Is anybody actually gaining any benefit outta it?

Okay.

[00:22:47] David Waumsley: Yeah. And I looked at, there's, in a way, there's not that much that is new other than the fact that you're flipping things round, I think in this whole process. 'cause I looked at her book, Sarah has a book design, content design, and she talks about things that we've known for ages, and I forgot the name of the guy who.

Brought this idea in. When we, went digital for the first time, the big difference was push and pull marketing. And she talks about that a lot in this, it frames this. The fact that we've moved from this idea where previously when we marketed to people, we pushed out our messages, and now with the job online is that we have to.

Pull people in with what they need.

[00:23:26] Nathan Wrigley: oh, okay.

[00:23:28] David Waumsley: I, who was the guy,

[00:23:29] Nathan Wrigley: ah, that's, no, that's not a piece of knowledge I've ever known, I don't think. But that's interesting. Maybe when you'll say, maybe when you finally get the name after he click stop

[00:23:39] David Waumsley: a big friend of WordPress, you'll know him, you'll, oh, is Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter. His name came to mind, but he's the guy who coined that push and pull, so she's still working on that kind of thing. This, getting the men, I think it's taken us so many years to get the mentality of the digital world. we slowly slipped from print and marketing out to.

This. And so there's not much that's actually new. Anyway, let me move on to next slide.

[00:24:07] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So we're now looking at core principles and what we've said here is, all content should answer a real question or help complete a task. Yeah, check that makes sense. Decisions are based on research and audience, not internal preference.

Oh, so guilty. words are not always the answer. Consider tables c check checklists. Visuals use words the audience uses, not bargain brand or insider terminology. I think the Gov UK website is pretty good with that. unclear content, erodes trust, be consistent, accurate, and honest. and the final one, content should be planned, reviewed, and retired.

Not forgotten. Okay, over to

[00:24:52] David Waumsley: you. I guess we've not anything new that we're saying it. This is just the core principles with it and the only thing I can add in here really is that the gov. UK site is considered as the gold standard for anybody doing content design. And actually, I don't think I mentioned this in the notes.

It will be there in the links, but, you can learn all you need to do about the process by going to the Gov UK site anyway, because all of their principles, all of their design systems are something you can follow yourself anyway, so you can learn everything you need from there. Okay, let me move on to next slide.

Oh, I, there's just a couple of examples here. I've put on the slide.

[00:25:32] Nathan Wrigley: this is great. I love this. It's just so handy. Unnecessarily helpful. Let's frame it that way. Yeah.

[00:25:38] David Waumsley: Yeah. For people on the audio, there's just two screenshots I've taken of the page, one page where it's got the UK bank holidays and the other one is checking whether you need a UK Visa.

And I just thought I'd put these up as a couple of examples because following their sort of principles, it's very clear to me that when type in, you want to know about UK. Bank holidays, what you'll primarily probably want to know is the next one.

[00:26:05] Nathan Wrigley: Right?

[00:26:06] David Waumsley: That's

[00:26:06] Nathan Wrigley: exactly that. Yeah.

[00:26:07] David Waumsley: Yeah, exactly.

And so that's got a nice big block where it calls it out to you before you get the table of all the rest of the stuff, and for the next year as well on that. Where I think, without this sort of thinking, you'd probably just put your table there, wouldn't you? And people have to,

[00:26:23] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Yeah. And you'd have to go through and the old ones would drop would be, you'd have 17 at the top that have already gone into the past that are not necessary and so on.

Yeah, it's great. really cool. Yeah. And it looks like we've got a holiday tomorrow, which is quite nice. Yeah,

[00:26:39] David Waumsley: exactly. There's some probably go out on the holiday day. Yeah. yeah. And the other one was just. Typical of these, as many of these ones start now. So check if you need a UK Visa, and there's these conversational forms where you click on it, it asks you the relevant questions you fill in, so it leads you to where you want to get your answer.

Yeah, instead of my. Indiana example of having to go to various different sites, download PDFs and see if the publish date reflects what I should be doing at this particular moment. This guide you through and you can trust it. You know that this is going to ask you all the main questions to be able to steer you in the right direction.

[00:27:16] Nathan Wrigley: So this happens a lot on that website. There, there's, yeah. So you end up on this website usually because you've got a task that you need to complete. There's a goal, like it might be filing the taxes or booking a, a driving test or whatever it may be. And it very often begins with this start now process.

So you click the start now button and then you are asked a bunch of questions. And although at the time you think. What, why, do I need to do this? What you quickly work out is, okay, I've just eliminated an hour of searching because it, those, that process gets you to where you need to then begin and, it's really easy to ignore the fact that it's really helpful.

But it's brilliantly helpful, so here, with the start now with the Visa thing, it will probably ask you a bunch of questions to, just save you time, to avoid the things that you don't need to do. And maybe it'll ask you where you're going or where you're coming from and things like that.

it's. Brilliantly done.

[00:28:18] David Waumsley: Yeah. It's just great design, isn't it? Yeah. And I think this is what, I think it's so forgotten that this is web design, it's not pretty, but it's, functional, it's proper design. It solves the problem.

[00:28:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And the curious thing here is as well, is that you are, how to describe it, you are making.

So the, complexity is disappears and nobody will ever know or thank you for that work because you'll never reveal to them that the hours that you save them. and yet there you have saved them hours. And I told you about the process I've had getting my, visa, for India. And that's been anything other than fun.

Nobody helps you at all. All destroy.

[00:29:04] David Waumsley: It's sad thing. Good design is invisible, isn't it?

[00:29:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. There you go. You encapsulated it in one perfect sentence. Lovely. So two good examples there.

okay. Shall I read these ones out as well?

[00:29:15] David Waumsley: Yes, please.

[00:29:16] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So this is how website owners might. Be able to apply this.

So before writing anything, ask, what does the user need to know or do here? I think we just saw a good example of that. Look for evidence, search queries, customer questions or analytics. Use plain language, avoid jargon, and provide meaningful headings. Choose the simplest format. That's the win that one, isn't it?

If a list works better than pros, use a list, remove or update content that is rarely visited, or no longer relevant, and when in doubt. Cut short and clear tends to perform better. Nicely done. That's encapsulated it beautifully.

[00:29:54] David Waumsley: Yeah, I think that's it. one of the things I think that always makes me take a deep breath is when anything saying, look for research and evidence.

[00:30:05] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. It's easy to write that sentence. It's so hard

[00:30:08] David Waumsley: to do. It is to try and get a client to think about what evidence do we have, it happens and. I was just doing this and one of my clients contacted me and I thought this was quite funny, really, because they contacted me to ask me why they were getting lots of inquiries from people who thought their services might be free.

They were often counselling services and and it just seemed so funny because it hadn't occurred to me to them that they might just ask the person. Providing this information, how valuable that might be, why they've done this, if you was to reply back to them, let's say.

Yeah,

you No, we don't, but maybe you wanna look here or something like that.

But can I ask you why? I have my own theory on it is the fact that their site, they're in a small area and their site looks creditable enough. It's a centre to look like. It might be the centre for. Private and for public stuff as well. That's what my guess would be is the design of the site.

But it's just incredible that people in my experience, like it's really difficult. They often know sometimes through conversations, but forgotten it, but that, clients know more about their clients and their confusion that, but they don't let you know as a designer. And it could be so useful, to,

[00:31:23] Nathan Wrigley: interesting.

Yeah.

[00:31:26] David Waumsley: And that kind of stuff. yeah, but also, I think, yeah, the whole removing stuff is interesting 'cause, I did have. I've only ever done this once, actually. It's a redesign of somebody's site. And this goes way back to that sort of time when the, I guess the way we thought we could do best with traffic and Google is to have as many different posters you possibly could.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. to get as many different keywords featured as you possibly could. And it was generally short content. And we know that Google now doesn't like this low quality. Content any longer it wants, So I went about chopping, so it chopped, there was about 300 plus posts on there and I chopped about 200 of 'em and just killed them.

And it scared the life out of me, but mostly it was justified 'cause there was broken links and everything. It was doing a more damage.

[00:32:15] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That's really interesting. Also, it's the invisible, boring work that sometimes you have to do. and you're not. maybe you will, but it, doesn't feel like something you're particularly gonna get paid for is cutting work.

But if the bigger picture is to have a successful website and you now know that Google doesn't look favourably on the keyword stuffing, let's have a load of meaning meaningless blog posts that really don't help anything, then that is necessary work. But I can see that being one that gets dropped really quickly by the clients paying the web developer sort of thing, because.

I dunno. It's just who wants to pay to get stuff caught, but it is very important.

[00:32:57] David Waumsley: Yeah, and I think, with a lot of these, principles that we're looking at, I think, there's a good argument to have this sort of annual thing where you look down a list of stuff, right? Which I had to do out this manual in the end where you look at it and go, okay, what things might need to change in for this next year?

Because they just go on for years and years, and some of that might be chopping it. The interesting thing was, even though I was scared stiff of removing, 'cause this site did really well with its traffic and Largely, I had some statistics so I could see which. Posts were particularly doing it.

And actually it was only a couple of posts that were bringing in most of the traffic anyway. Oh,

[00:33:29] Nathan Wrigley: wow, okay.

[00:33:29] David Waumsley: And it wasn't really relevant to them. It was from, a country that wouldn't be where their services were anyway.

[00:33:36] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. Oh,

[00:33:38] David Waumsley: but still, it's interesting. It made no difference to the traffic at all chopping these down.

So it was quite,

[00:33:43] Nathan Wrigley: oh, that's. You did well there, David. Hold on.

[00:33:46] David Waumsley: here. I didn't damage them.

[00:33:48] Nathan Wrigley: no. Okay.

[00:33:51] David Waumsley: okay, I'll move on. And we're actually done. I've just put here there's, those who are watching on YouTube will see there's some links, but they will be there in our show notes here. But yeah, as I mentioned, I think, there is the Gov UK site and if you go to the link that's there, it actually gives you all the guidance you need if you want to get into content design.

[00:34:13] Nathan Wrigley: So you are gonna bury those in the comments on the YouTube. Are you, and also on the website, if people go to, what was it? No script show slash 33 0, then able see those. Okay.

[00:34:25] David Waumsley: There's some really good resources there. And some videos as well with Sarah Richards as well talking about it. But, I think, yeah, it's really, it's helped me just that idea of trying to work out a process for the web where thinking I.

Previously with page builders, I was looking visually and then cramming in the content. Then I thought, that's wrong. I need to get the content and then, put the design on it. And now this has challenged that to make me think, actually no, the two processes go together. You're constantly thinking about the design and the content at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:58] Nathan Wrigley: I think that distils it perfectly, doesn't it? That's the summation of what you're talking about. It's agile ongoing conversation. Keep, yeah. Okay. is that it? Are we done? Crikey, we are done. That's gotta one of the, that's gotta be the shortest episode we've done in. Ages.

[00:35:14] David Waumsley: I, know.

And the next one will be, I think, we'll come back with one of the next pillars. I think we'll do inclusive design because that's all about designing for diversity, designing for everybody. oh, not

[00:35:27] Nathan Wrigley: nicely, said David, with passion. Love it. so I will literally see you soon.

[00:35:33] David Waumsley: Yeah, you will.

Yes. Over here. Okay.

[00:35:37] Nathan Wrigley: Thanks David. Take it easy.

[00:35:38] David Waumsley: Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye.