Content Strategy and Information Architecture: Making Complex Websites Easier to Manage and Use

The result is the website has become increasingly difficult for people to navigate, search and understand.

This is a particular challenge for public sector bodies, universities and other complex organisations managing large, information-rich websites.

The answer is not necessarily a new website.

Often, the more important starting point is to understand the content you already have, how it is organised and whether it is meeting the needs of the people using it.

What is website content strategy?

Content strategy is about making deliberate decisions about what information a website should provide, who it is for, how it should be structured and how it will be managed over time.

For a large organisation, that can involve questions such as:

• What content do our audiences actually need?
• Can people find that information easily?
• Do we have several pages answering essentially the same question?
• Is important information buried within the organisational structure of the website?
• Which content is outdated, redundant or no longer useful?
• Where should the authoritative version of particular information live?
• Who is responsible for keeping content accurate?
• How can we prevent the same problems building up again?

These are content and information architecture questions rather than visual design questions.

And they can often be addressed without redesigning or rebuilding the website.

Start by understanding what you have

Before deciding what needs to change, you need a clear picture of what already exists.

A website content audit provides that evidence.

For a large website, this can mean creating a structured inventory of existing content and assessing it against agreed criteria. These might include accuracy, relevance, duplication, accessibility, readability, user need and performance.

Analytics and internal search data can add another layer of evidence. They can help identify heavily used content, unsuccessful searches, unexpected user journeys and pages that may be performing poorly.

The aim is not simply to produce a spreadsheet containing every URL. A useful content audit should help an organisation make decisions.

What should we keep? What should we improve? What can we consolidate? What should we remove? And where are the gaps?

Content consolidation: less can be more

One of the most common problems we encounter on established websites is duplication. Overtime several pages may address the same user need.

That creates problems for users, who have to work out which information is relevant and authoritative. It creates problems for search engines. And it creates an ongoing governance problem because several pieces of content now need to be maintained.

Content consolidation and rationalisation addresses this by identifying duplicate, redundant, outdated and low-value content and deciding what should happen to it.

Where appropriate, this can also mean establishing a single source of truth: one authoritative piece of content that can be maintained properly and referenced from elsewhere.

The objective is not simply to reduce page numbers. It is to create a clearer and more coherent body of information.

Information architecture should reflect how people think

Another common problem is that websites gradually come to reflect the organisation that created them rather than the people using them.

Internally, departmental structures and responsibilities make perfect sense. Users may know nothing about them.

Good information architecture connects those user needs with the information the organisation needs to provide. That means looking at navigation, labelling, categorisation, relationships between content and the different routes people use to find information.

It can involve user research, task analysis, analytics, search data, stakeholder workshops and testing proposed structures with real users. The result should make the website easier to navigate without requiring users to understand how the organisation itself is structured.

Findability is bigger than navigation

People do not necessarily start at your homepage. They might arrive through Google, an internal website search, a link from another organisation or increasingly through an AI-assisted search or discovery tool.

That changes the way organisations need to think about content. Individual pages need clear purposes. Related information needs meaningful relationships. Titles, headings, metadata and terminology need to be considered carefully. And important information should not be unnecessarily repeated across multiple locations.

Good information architecture and good content strategy work together. The objective is simple: wherever someone starts their journey, they should be able to find clear, accurate and authoritative information.

Plain English and content design

Complex organisations often need to communicate complex information. That does not mean the communication itself has to be complicated.

Content design looks at what somebody needs to know or do and structures information around that need. Plain English helps make that information easier to understand.

This does not mean removing necessary technical or statutory detail. It means presenting it as clearly as possible. Headings, page structure, terminology, links and calls to action all matter.

Accessibility matters too. Accessible content is not simply a compliance requirement. Clear structure, descriptive headings, meaningful links and understandable language make information easier for everyone to use.

The difficult part is often organisational

Technology is rarely the only reason large websites become difficult to manage.

Content has owners. Different teams have priorities. Subject matter experts understandably care about accuracy and detail. Responsibilities may overlap. And removing or consolidating content can require agreement between several stakeholders.

For that reason, effective content strategy work cannot happen entirely within a spreadsheet.

It requires consultation, workshops and constructive conversations with the people who understand the subject matter.

The objective is not to impose a new structure on an organisation. It is to combine subject expertise with evidence about user needs and reach decisions that everyone understands.

Content governance: stopping the problem returning

A successful content consolidation project should not end when the initial clean-up is complete.

Without clear ownership and governance, content starts accumulating again. Organisations therefore need practical answers to questions such as:

Who owns each area of content? Who can publish? When should content be reviewed? How do we decide whether a new page is really needed? How are outdated pages identified? How do we maintain a single source of truth?

The right governance model will vary from organisation to organisation. It needs to be practical enough to work within existing resources rather than becoming another process that people eventually stop following.

Do you need a new website?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But not always.

If the fundamental problem is duplicated content, confusing navigation, unclear ownership or information organised around internal structures rather than user needs, replacing the technology alone will not solve it.

In fact, moving poorly structured content into a new website can simply reproduce the same problems in a newer system. That is why we believe content strategy and information architecture should begin with understanding rather than design.

A structured review can establish what is working, what is not and what needs to change. It can also provide a practical roadmap for improvement, whether that ultimately involves changes to the existing website or informs a future redevelopment.

How Path can help

Path works with public sector bodies and other complex organisations to make large, information-rich websites clearer, simpler and easier to manage.

Our Content Strategy, Information Architecture and Content Consolidation services can include:

• website content audits and inventories
• content analysis and rationalisation
• identification of duplicate, redundant and outdated content
• content consolidation and single-source-of-truth planning
• user needs and task analysis
• information architecture and navigation
• website findability
• Plain English and content design
• accessibility and inclusive content
• stakeholder workshops and consultation
• content governance and ownership
• implementation planning and roadmaps.

This work can be commissioned as a standalone consultancy project. It does not need to lead to a website redesign or redevelopment by Path.

The starting point is simply to understand the problem properly and establish what will make the greatest difference for your users and your organisation.

If you are reviewing the content, structure or information architecture of a large website, talk to us about how we can help. Contact 01 6799212 or email hello@path.ie