Content design Guides, templates and articles
Guides, templates and articles about content design, government communications, digital experience with a few case studies thrown in for fun.
Your website content is a Commonwealth record. What that means before you delete a page.
Deleting a page on an Australian government website is a disposal decision. Here is what records management really asks of your content team, and in what order.
What the Digital Access Standard means for content teams
The Digital Access Standard makes one architecture decision documented and reported: does this service need its own front door? Content teams hold the evidence.
How to do a content audit without tools: a spreadsheet, 50 pages, and one question
You can do a content audit without tools. A spreadsheet, your top 50 pages by traffic, and one sharp question lands most of the decisions any audit has to make.
How to manage content during a government website consolidation
Australian government website consolidation is more than a technical migration. Here's the guide to content decisions that determine whether the new site works.
How to refresh your content audit for the AI era
Most content audit templates predate AI. Add five columns for the AI era, and learn to test how AI systems read and cite your government content. No paid tools.
Keeping government website content up to date: build a currency system, not another audit
Keeping government website content up to date takes a system, not another audit. Set review dates, name one owner per page, and retire stale content by default.
Content design scope of work template: what to include so procurement can actually buy it
A content design scope of work template for Australian practitioners. Named deliverables, exclusions, sign-off points, and wording a procurement team signs off.
Accessibility overlays will not make your government website compliant
Accessibility overlays will not make a government website WCAG 2.2 or DDA compliant. The AHRC now says so. The real fix is content design, not a bolt-on widget.
How to measure content design impact when there's no baseline
Measuring content design impact without a baseline: pick one defensible measure, record the diagnostic state precisely now, and your first number is the before.
Content audit metrics: the five measures that get executive sign-off
Content audit metrics that get executive sign-off: relevance, accuracy, accessibility, traffic, and decision-readiness, scored on one cover page they will read.
PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the standard for accessible PDFs. Most government PDFs do not meet it.
PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the international standard for accessible PDFs. Most Australian government PDFs do not meet it. The fix is governance, not better tooling.
A content audit is not your first step
A content audit is the third step. Before you review a single page, you need both a content inventory and an impact assessment. Here is what all three steps do.