Technical Communication Department Website Content Audit Benjamin Wilkinson

Technical Communication Department Website Content Audit Benjamin Wilkinson Morgan Sharp

Purpose The purpose of this presentation is to quantify our content audit conducted of the UNT Tech Comm website.

We'll cover. . . • Content audits: What are they, and why are they useful? • Our methods of conducting this content audit. • The results of this content audit. • Conclusions: What do those results mean? • Our recommendations for the site.

What is a Content Audit? • A content audit of a website determines what content is available, how good the content is, and if the content is helpful to the user.

Why Conduct a Content Audit? • Content audits are important to conduct because: • • • Audits create an outline of the project's budgets Audits assess a company's style guidelines Audits show what content a company has and how to maintain that content

The Benefits of a Content Audit • Content audits help businesses meet goals and discern the importance of their content. • Content audits give businesses an idea of what is working with their content and what needs to be changed. • Content audits help developers create user-oriented content that is relevant, current, and supportive for the user. • Content audits benefit companies by creating a reference guide for all content.

How we conducted the research Our Methods

Quantitative and Qualitative Data • The quantitative categories we discerned are: • • Format Topic Technical home Word count Internal links External links Traffic Average time on page • The five qualitative categories on our content audit are: • • • Relevance Currency Findability Readability Supportive User

Browseo • To determine word count, internal and external links, and title, we used browseo. net, which is a SEO tool that works using only a URL.

Technical Home • We used Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer to determine technical home for each URL.

Department Web Analytics Report • We found pageviews (traffic) and average time spent on page using the TECM Department Web Analytics report shared with us by Dr. Robles.

Qualitative Scoring System • For the Qualitative Scoring System, we used rating scale of 1 through 4. • Each webpage was graded on its relevancy, currency, findability, readability, and supportability according to this scale. • We used formatted statements to keep the ratings consistent and accurate.

Rating the Content • Each webpage was rated according to these parameters: • If the Qualitative category (readability, relevancy, etc. ) caused the user's experience to suffer because of it, it was rated a 1 out of 4 • If the Qualitative category caused the user to have an average experience, it was rated a 2 out of 4 • If the Qualitative category gave the user an above average experience, it was rated a 3 out of 4 • If the Qualitative category gave the user an enhanced experience, it was rated a 4 out of 4

Our Results The numbers and data + what they mean

Format • We found that most of the URLs in our content audit (50%) were in webpage format. • • We chose to analyze the Student Showcase portfolios, and they made up roughly 26% of the URLs in the audit. • • This is good – it shows that most of the content on the website is in a readable and accessible format. We chose to include portfolios so that we could see how they compare to other pages of the site, and to check if they were all still in working order (only one was not: 6. 1. 1). The remaining 24% of URLs were PDFs, mostly consisting of application material. • There's really no way to avoid this, because PDFs allow for easy printing, viewing, etc.

Word Count • The average word count of the URLs was 281. 2 words. • • The least words that occurred on a page was only 3. This was seen on one of the students' portfolio pages (6. 3. 1). • • This is a great number to aim for. Destini's home page doesn't have any content other than her name housed in a trendy-looking logo, and the three menu tabs of her site: Projects, Resume, and About. She should consider a different landing page with content that hooks the reader. The most words used on a page was on the MA page: 834 words. • This is a little lengthy. Viewers' attention spans could prevent them from staying on this page.

Student Showcase Page Views 67% • 96% The first page of the student showcase was viewed 1899 times, while the second page of the showcase was viewed only 623 times. This is a drop of over 67%. • The decrease in views from page 1 of the showcase to page 3 of the showcase (only 68 views) is over 96%! This incongruence means that students whose portfolios are on pages 2 -4 will not get the same amount of exposure as the students whose portfolios appear on page one.

Recommendations • • The Tech Comm website should be updated 4 times a year. This means before and after each fall and spring semester. This ensures currency. Broken links need to be reported to the administrator and fixed immediately. An example of this is seen by ID 6. 1. 1. The first page of the student showcase gets over 3 times the views of the second page and almost 28 times the views of the third page. It would be helpful for the students' portfolios to be shuffled frequently so that each student will get similar exposure. Finally, the overall relevancy and readability of the content could be enhanced. This means grouping the content better and creating shorter, more concise sentences.

Thank you for your time! Please contact us with any questions: Benjamin Wilkinson: benjaminwilkinson@my. unt. edu Morgan Sharp: morgansharp 3@my. unt. edu

References • • • Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http: //www. rexswain. com/httpview. html. Robles, V. (2019). Qualitative Content Audit. Robles, V. (2019). Quantitative Content Audit. Robles, V. (2019). Analytics techcomm. unt. edu. Technical Communication. (n. d. ). Retrieved fromhttps: //techcomm. unt. edu/. Your New SEO Browser. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http: //www. browseo. net/.