What is a Content Inventory?
The foundation of any website redesign project or content management system migration effort, a content inventory is exactly what is sounds like: a quantitative analysis of the content of a web site. In its typical form, a content inventory is a list of files, traditionally managed in a spreadsheet, that is used as a starting point in the journey from as-is to to-be.
Throughout the course of a redesign or migration project, the content inventory accrues additional information. To the original list of files (URLs of pages, images, documents), the content strategist or content manager may begin to add additional columns of information to indicate content ownership within the organization, status of review, notes for migration, redirects and SEO-optimized URLs, and so forth. The spreadsheet is often organized by the structure of the site so that site navigational model can be derived. The inventory may also be used as the method by which content is tracked from one system to another. It may even double as the copy deck, if content is being rewritten and the site migration team is using the inventory to guide page rebuild. By the time the project is complete, the spreadsheet is often the most comprehensive repository of information about the content and structure of the site.
Why Do A Content Inventory?
The reasons to create a content inventory include:
Assess as-is landscape of a site
Provides basis for project estimation
Helps identify patterns in content structure
Sets baseline to measure to-be site against
Basis for migration tracking
When to Inventory?
At the start of a site redesign
In preparation for a content management system migration project
As part of ongoing site maintenance
The key to successful website content maintenance is first understanding your assets. You have many ways of understanding the technology running a website but the inventory is the central way to understand what that technology delivers: content.
Taking a quantitative content inventory, a document that lists all of your website pages and data about those pages, has been acknowledged as time-consuming—or as Jeff Veen said in 2002, "mind-numbing"—but ultimately rewarding practice of website designers, site managers, information architects and content strategists for many years.
Questions Quantitative Content Inventories Answer
How many pages does the website have?
How many and what other types of content assets are there (images, videos, documents) and what pages are they associated with?
Where are pages located, identified by URL?
What do the URL structures indicate about content types?
How many pages link to or out of each page?
Is necessary metadata present and optimized?
The Role of a Content Inventory in Managing and Maintaining a Website
Content inventories have multiple uses. One is making sure that you always have the information necessary to understand your content catalog and make decisions based on evidence. An accurate assessment of what pages you have allows you to build a plan for your content lifecycle from on-going maintenance to future development, re-use and possible migration of your website content. Content inventories are critical documentation to projects such as redesigns, refreshes, or migration.
The lack of information provided by an inventory can affect management and staff's ability to make informed decisions about website content. Having an accurate and easy-to-read inventory can be an important factor in communicating between many parties. As most content inventories are collected in spreadsheets, a tool that allows you to quickly display information to multiple parties as well as easily export into Excel or other spreadsheet software will give you the most flexibility in customizing reports for various audiences.
The Advantages of Content Inventories
Website content inventory software helps save time discovering the breadth of your content. In The Right Way to Do a Content Audit, Laura Creekmore pointed out that when we work with websites every day, we know how much content is there and how it's structured. An inventory can seem like a redundant activity but an inventory is what helps us communicate the breadth of the website to stakeholders. "If key decision makers don't know—and want to know—what's there, you need a quantitative inventory." In telling us the basic quantitative facts about a website, content inventory software helps us work from a more accurate understanding of our content.
Content Inventories Form the Basis for Content Audits
From a content inventory, you can build content audits, documents that allow you to review page-by-page how content is performing against predefined measures of quality and effectiveness. A website content inventory acts as a foundation for an informed content audit by returning the information you most need to know about your site: how much of it is there, what types of content you have (pages, audio, video, documents), as well as URL structure, which can provide valuable clues as to content types (for example, product pages on an e-commerce site will have similar URL patterns), and how the site is structured (from URL structure perspective).
Once you have a basic understanding of your content's breadth, you can establish parameters for evaluating and analyzing content.