Content evaluation checklist

Work with nominated content owners and/or subject experts to review your content for currency and accuracy. This should include checking any technical terms, policy intent and legal requirements.

Questions to ask

• Is this content located elsewhere on your site or on another agency’s site? If so, consider removing it.
• Is this content the main source of information? If so, does it need to be updated?
• What content is missing?
• Are the links working and relevant?
• Are you publishing content or documents that are owned by a third party and on their website? If so, you should link to that site rather than duplicate the content on your site.

Quality content should support a user need when the user interacts with government.

Ask a content expert to evaluate the quality of each content item in the audit spreadsheet. They should assess your content against the following criteria.

Usability

• Who is the intended user of the content?
• Does your content meet a user need?
• Does the content outline what the user needs to know?
• Does the content have a clear path to a call-to-action?
• Is the user directed through the information with scannable subheadings?
• Are links informative?
• Can the user find or do what they need to do?
• Is this the best way to present the information? (For example, is the content outlining a process? If so, would the content be more usable in another form, such as a calculator?)
• Have you analysed and actioned your user feedback?

Findability

• Does the navigation help the user find information?
• Are the information architecture labels easy to understand?
• Is the meta description written as a call-to-action using relevant keywords?
• Is the information found using the site’s search?
• Is the information found using a search engine?
• Is the content in an HTML format?
• Is the content written using phrases and words your users are likely to use?
• Does this content link off to credible and authoritative online sources?
• Is each heading length optimised for search?

Readability

• Does the first sentence help users to decide if the page is relevant?
• Is the content written in plain English?
• Is the content written in active voice?
• Is a consistent tone used across the website?
• What is the readability level of each page? You can use a readability tool to estimate this.

Accessibility

Ensure content meets WCAG 2.0 requirements for content authors.

• Is the content written so that all users can read and understand it? Have you thought about people who speak English as a second, third or fourth language?
• Are the headings structured?
• Have you provided meaningful alt text for each image?
• Have you provided closed captions, audio descriptions or transcripts for videos?
• Can you turn off closed captions in videos?
• Does the link text identify the purpose of the link?
• Is the content responsive to mobile devices?
• Do you need documents or PDF formats or can they be condensed into web page content?
• If you do need documents or PDF formats, are they made accessible and accompanied by an HTML extract or description?
• Are any images decorative? If so, consider removing them.
• Are data tables formatted using table headers and captions?