Website Usability Guidelines

Content Inventory (3 of 3)

In a huge site, you probably want to have a team of people working with the content inventory, assigning sections of it to different managers. If you do that, you might want to add a category to indicate who the manager is for each page.

Use the content inventory to 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. For a new site, use the planned content inventory as a way of building the content for the site in a controlled and methodical way.

A website 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 website spreadsheet or database, someone must be assigned to maintain it; and you must have a way of submitting changes to that person.