Gerry McGovern on Web Content Migration
Dropping names seems to work in this business so the tactic today is to take one of my pet peeves about content management, as I’ve experienced it, and supporting it with the consulting experience of published author and usability expert Gerry McGovern. His recent article, Web content migration: disasterous strategy might hopefully pull some web managers into rethinking their strategy, particularly regarding the value and relevance of content.
Time after time we see redesigns pumped out that are merely graphic design facades on older content. Why are we migrating content directly from Microsoft Frontpage into MySource Matrix? Nobody is asking that question, at least not in their upper management meetings.
One example that comes to mind is the migration from Frontpage to Matrix of the Tasmanian Department of Education several years ago with around 20,000 pages ranging in date back to 1998. My role was to Quality Assure (QA) some of the content which had been earlier pasted directly into the Matrix Content Management System. Most pages were badly written, ill-targeted and written by everyday managers who had no understanding of the web or the way people use the web in the external world.
Considering the time it took two people to cut-and-paste 20,000 pages across to Matrix wouldn’t it have been better invested in generating a new updated and relevant core content? How many of those pages existed simply to appease a manager’s prior itch on the day? Most.
I like Gerry’s analogy to a jug of curdled milk. You make a new shiny redesign and pour in the old curdled milk then celebrate with latte at a project complete. But that wouldn’t be latte from the jug of curdled milk – no way! The job isn’t done. Not really.
It’s critical, and I’d say especially for government, to assess value content from chaff content. First, because managing a forever bucket will grow increasingly less feasable into the next decade. Second, because for every extra page you introduce on your website there is a corresponding complexity placed as a burden on the user to sift through the rubbish to find the gem of meaningful content that brought them there.
How many people do you expect are visiting government websites (any website) just browsing? Next to none, at least for government. Users are going there to find something specific, to achieve a specific task or achieve specific goals. Anything you do to assist that mechanism is web management. What you do by creating information forests – especially of fake plastic trees in the form of chaff content – is called web mis-management.
So, if you don’t believe my occasional rant over the years on this subject, take the word of Gerry McGovern that you need to rethink your idea of a website redesign. Don’t just pour the old crap back into the new website bucket. Generate new content. Make it fresh. Assess whether it’s content or just some manager pissing on the pole to make a part of the site his or hers… and most of all ask yourself with brutal honesty whether each individual page has value to your website users. That’s critical.
Yes that is a large job. Yes it’s a challenging proposition, especially for larger websites. But in the end your content is your value proposition to the world at large. Do you stay fresh and relevant? Or just keep managing that curdled milk bullshit that you inherited?
This message needs to go directly to the upper management meetings. Where does everything on the website end – 30,000 pages, 1,000,000 pages? Don’t let content management be the pink elephant in the room. The next time you redesign suggest that you’re thinking about new content.
