Content Inventory
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What Is a Content Inventory
A content inventory is a list of all the content on your site. The content (the information) is what your site offers to your users. You have to know what you are now offering and decide whether each piece of it is still needed; still accurate; and still written in the right level of detail, the right tone, and the right language for your users.
Many Web sites grow by accretion. People keep adding pages to the Web site, but few pages ever get taken away. After a while, if you don't keep a content inventory, no one knows what is on the site. It is very hard to maintain a site if you don't have a content inventory.
If you are developing a new site, setting up a content inventory at the beginning puts you on a good path. If you keep up the inventory as the site matures, you will continue to know what is on the site, how old each page is, when each page has been revised or needs to be reviewed, and so on.
If you are revising a Web site, start with a content inventory of what is now on the site. Then, use your Web site requirements to create a planned content inventory for the new version of the site.
Creating a Content Inventory
Create a spreadsheet or use some database application to categorize and describe the information on every page of your site. You should include:
- the overall topic or area to which the page belongs
- the page title and URL
- a short description of the information on the page
- when the page was created, date of last revision and when the next page review is due
- who wrote the page (if you know it), who is responsible for the page now and that person's contact information
- the expiration date of the page (if there is one)
- other pages that this page links to
- page status – keep, delete, revise, in revision process, planned, being written, being edited, in review, ready for posting, or posted.
If you use a spreadsheet or database, you can sort the inventory by any of the categories of information you have. The primary category might be by overall topic or area so that you can see all the pages that relate to the same information.
For maintenance purposes, you may also want to sort by date of last update so that you can view all of the old content on the site and review these pages to determine if they need updating.
Content Inventory Uses
As you can see from the list of categories, you can use the content inventory to get a handle on what is on the site and what needs to be done to different parts of the site.
For a new site, you can use the planned content inventory to keep track of the developing site in a controlled and methodical way. For a large site, you probably want to have a team of people working with the content inventory, assigning sections of it to different managers.
Use the content inventory for maintenance purpose. Work with page owners (and/or their managers) to decide what pages should be dropped, what pages need to be revised, what content is missing and needs to be written.
A content inventory must be dynamic. Someone must be in charge of keeping it up to date. If you are working with a content management system, you may be able to set privileges so that specific people keep up specific parts of the inventory. You may also be able to set the system to notify content owners when their pages must be reviewed. If you are using a newly constructed spreadsheet or database, someone must be assigned to maintain it; and you must have a way of submitting changes to that person.
Next Steps
Once you have created a content inventory, you are ready to Define the Navigation for your Web site. You may want to Perform a Card Sort to learn how actual users organize the content on your Web site.
