Federation University Content and Governance Strategy

Federation University was looking to consolidate and redevelop their website, and wanted to incorporate content and governance strategy into their operating model, to help them better manage the website going forward.

Working with Federation University and their partners, we leveraged user research and organisational insights to deliver an improved site structure and information architecture. We then created a comprehensive content strategy that supported their organisational goals, and a governance strategy to help them manage their web presence more efficiently and effectively.

Federation University was already undertaking a range of discovery workshops and user testing sessions that would inform their broader website project. We leveraged the findings from this discovery work and used it to inform our understanding of both the Federation University digital landscape and organisational needs, and the needs and preferences of their users.

Content governance discovery

To help us gather information specific to the University’s content needs, we ran additional workshops with stakeholders involved in content operations. Federation University had been operating under a distributed model of content governance, meaning that there was a large group of stakeholders involved in content authoring and publishing, across a range of departments and areas of expertise. These workshops helped us to understand the pain points each of these stakeholders faced in their current processes, how the central content team worked and interacted with the wider stakeholder groups, and the diverse needs of all those involved in content operations.

Defining site structures

Armed with insights into Federation University’s digital landscape, our first step was to develop a new information architecture (IA) that would better support core user journeys, and make it easier for the University’s target audiences to navigate site content. We created dedicated sections for each of the University’s core audience groups, organised around the actions or tasks they would be seeking to complete.

This new site structure became an integral piece of the content strategy we developed, serving as the framework upon which all Federation University’s content projects would be built

Setting a long term content strategy

We created a comprehensive content strategy that examined the differing needs of the University’s primary and secondary audience segments, and developed a core strategy and supporting tactics that would allow the University to meet these user needs. Our core strategy was tied back to the goals and organisational objectives of the university more broadly, ensuring that all future content projects would support and further the University’s work on both a micro and macro level.

As part of this strategy, we also provided guidance and documentation about best practice SEO and accessibility, how to write effectively for the web, as well as how to structure metadata.

Since the website redevelopment project was ongoing and Federation University was planning a large-scale overhaul of their site content as part of this project, we provided guidance around additional activities the University would need to complete prior to undertaking content redevelopment. This included advice and templates for ongoing content auditing, content development planning, content briefing, and ideas for the content roadmap.

Mapping realistic governance workflows and strategies

To give the Federation University content team the tools and framework they would need to manage their content processes going forward, we created a governance strategy that detailed the roles and responsibilities of each person involved in content authoring and production at the University. This included everything from the cadence of content and analytics reviews, the format that briefs submitted to the content team should take, and a scheme of severity levels for content update requests.

This strategy empowers the content team to manage their workload, as well as set expectations among the wider stakeholder group to ensure that content processes function as efficiently as possible, and that all website content meets editorial standards and contributes towards broader content goals.

The new information architecture, combined with the content and governance strategies, gives Federation University the foundational framework they need to move forward with their website redevelopment project, and beyond.