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 skip 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.

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

We also need to review the content and what happens once it is out of date.