Designing digital content
Good content design allows people to do, or find, what they need quickly.
We tend to publish content about what we want to say. We do not always think about what users need to know. This can make content difficult to understand and act on.
We can avoid this by designing content based upon research and evidence. We should review user behaviour, analytics and feedback.
User needs
Content should be designed in the best way to meet user needs.
A user need is something that someone needs to do or find out from us. It can include:
- finding out who a county councillor is
- reporting a pothole
- paying for a permit
- booking a registrar appointment
- working out if their child is eligible for free school meals
- applying for free school meals
Publish only what someone needs to know so they can complete their task. Nothing more.
Find out more about user needs on GOV.UK.
How users interact with website content
We are not just writing for the website. Our content is also used by:
- search engines
- AI agents (for example, Impy chatbot)
- search engine AI summaries
- services and internal teams that reuse our content as a knowledge source
- customer service centre
Best practice
1. Addressing the user
Address the user as ‘you’ where possible. Content on the site often makes a direct appeal to citizens and businesses to get involved or take action, for example ‘you can contact HMRC by phone and email’ or ‘pay your car tax’.
2. Gender-neutral text
Make sure text is gender neutral wherever possible. For example, use ‘them’, ‘their’, ‘they’ and ‘we’ when referring to the council. Gender neutral terminology is more accountable and friendly.
3. Writing body copy
Keep your body copy as focused as possible.
Remember that you’re likely to be battling outside factors for people’s attention, not least their mood and situation. They might be looking on a mobile on a train, trying to complete their task online in the middle of a stressful family event or any combination of multiple unknowns. If you want their attention, do not waste their time.
4. Do not repeat the summary in the first paragraph
Use the ‘inverted pyramid’ approach with the most important information at the top tapering down to lesser detail.
- break up text with descriptive subheadings (the text should still make sense with the subheadings removed)
- paragraphs should have no more than five sentences each
- includes keywords to boost natural search rankings
- page length
There is no minimum or maximum page length for GOV.UK. However:
- people only read 20 to 28% of text on a web page
- remember that the pressure on the brain to understand increases for every 100 words you put on a page
This means that the quicker you get to the point, the greater the chance your target audience will see the information you want them to.
It’s most important that you write well. If you write only a single paragraph but it’s full of caveats, jargon and things users do not need to know (but you want to say) then it’s still too much.
Content design
Depending on what the user needs are, we may need to:
- reduce the amount of content we publish
- split one big piece of content into smaller pieces
- change the format of the content
- build a new format for the content
- publish content elsewhere, such as partner website or social media
- rewrite this from a user experience point of view
We also need to review the content and what happens once it is out of date.