McKesson, the nation’s largest healthcare company, wanted to assess the quantity and quality of its web content prior to a new CMS rollout. They hired me to do a content audit of more than 25,000 pages and report on what I learned.
Doing a content audit can be tedious, particularly with thousands of pages to review. There’s no other good way to do it than clicking on each URL and recording your findings. You hope the hard work will pay off with valuable insights, but you never know for sure until you just go for it.
Patterns begin to emerge from looking at the smallest details.
We recorded our data on Excel spreadsheets based on a set of parameters worked out with stakeholders.
An alpha-numeric code identifies each page and shows its placement within the site’s information architecture
It’s important to call out any content that is ROTN — redundant, outdated, trivial or offers not enough information.
After going through this process, we had plenty of findings to share.
We included action items with each observation.
The End Result: Stakeholders had a lot to think about based on our findings. Often, a content audit is a jumping off point for a lot of other content strategy projects. This one was no exception.