Content rules: engaging a

diverse audience through a

coherent content strategy

Seminar

22 January 2014

London

#CCStrategy

Seminar

22 January 2014

London

#CCStrategy

A focus on objectives How strong principles helped define a radical new

approach to content for the Oxfam GB website

January 2014

Gez Russell, Editor, Oxfam.org.uk

About the site

• 5 million unique visitors a year

• 3 main websites

• Promoting wide range of ways to get involved

• To a wide variety of audiences

• Huge continuous internal demand

• Social media, email, mobile

What needed fixing

• 25,000 pages!

• ‘IA creep’

• No clear philosophy – quantity over quality

Page 5

Who? What? Why?

The research

• 24 hours of stakeholder interviews

• 600+ business requirements

• User requirements gathering by survey,

focus group & contextual interview

• 3 days of ideation

• 16 weeks of designing customer journeys

and wireframing

• 1800 hrs of creative design & prototyping

• Card sorting

• Tree testing

• Competitor review

• Content audit

• 79 prototypes pages tested with 91 users

and 15 stakeholders

• A multi-disciplinary team

In short:

• Business expertise

• Design expertise

• Users’ input

• Best practice

• Research

• Analytics

The vision

“A catalyst for change”

A richly-featured, user-orientated website

which supports Oxfam's objectives

by informing, engaging and inspiring

our UK supporters to take action.

The principles

• Always inspire action

• Design for Persuasion

• Reinforce trust

• Always deliver onward journeys

• Design for mobile

• Ongoing evidence-based optimisation

The audit

92% of traffic visits

just 9% of pages

Establishing a framework

A new site, not a migration

• No more than 400 ‘curated’ pages

• Only action-centred content (no editorial for its own sake)

• Reinforce trust

• Supporter and professional content separated

• Use of self-archiving functionality where possible

Checklist for contributors

• Think content, not pages

• Does it duplicate or overlap existing content?

• How far does it meet the site principles?

• Does it have an obvious home in the site IA?

• Is it action focused?

• Is it for a UK audience?

Page 12

Page 13

Benefits since redesign

• Retained clear user journeys

• Better quality control (including processes and workflow)

• More test and learn

• Fewer inappropriate briefs, dealt with quicker

Thank you

About the author Gez Russell has been the editor of the Oxfam Great Britain website since 2006,

responsible for general user experience, and the coordination and quality control

of supporter content. He also provides inhouse training on web writing, with a

special focus on mobile. Outside the day job, Gez also freelances as a copywriter

and digital content consultant.

#CCStrategy

Upcoming events at

CharityComms: www.charitycomms.org.uk/events