Web content quality assurance procedure

All staff who produce content for the web should attend the “Writing for the Web” training course offered by the Staff Development Unit. In addition, there are some useful online resources on writing for the web .

Overview of the procedure

1. Self review
2. Peer review
3. Content approval
4. Determine maintenance cycle

Detail of the procedure

Step 1 – Self review

Print your content and review text, link text, metadata and images/multimedia. Make any changes that are required.

Text should be:

• Free from spelling and grammatical errors
• Concise: avoid long sentences and paragraphs
• Written in plain English using the active voice
• Formatted so that it is easy to visually scan (using meaningful headings, bulleted lists, short paragraphs, etc.)
• Written in a style that is not too promotional (avoid “marketese”)
• Written to comply with your department/unit style manual and the Monash Web Style Guide.

Text links should:

• Clearly indicate the target page, even when read out of context
• Include the document format and size for non-HTML documents

Metadata should include:

• An appropriate page title.
• A short description/summary of the content.
• A set of keywords that identify the content. Think about the type of words that people might type into a search engine to find your content.

Images should be:

• Cropped and/or resized to suit the purpose
• Optimised and saved in a format appropriate for use on the web.

Where multimedia formats are used, ensure:

• Transcripts are available for audio content
• Video is captioned (or transcribed)

Where PDF format is used, ensure:

• An RTF alternative is provided, or
• A way of contacting someone to obtain an accessible alternative

Resources

Relevant sections from the Monash Web Style Guide:

• Writing for the web
• Accessible written content
• Accessible navigation
• Writing page titles
• Guidelines on writing metadata
• Branding guidelines on the use of images
• Graphics and multimedia
• Accessible images and multimedia

For guidelines on optimising images for use online, see:

• Optimising images for the web using Photoshop (pdf 850kb) or
• Web graphics, the right way

Step 2: Peer review

Have a colleague review your content using the checklist in Step 1.

Step 3: Content approval

Consider whether you should have an approval step as part of your content development process. Should a manager be signing off on all or some of your web content?

Note: this step can be automated within the university's content management system, but you should be careful about creating publishing bottlenecks. Try it out as part of a manual process first.

Step 4: Determine a maintenance cycle

Most content will need to be reviewed periodically. Pages with links to other websites will need to be reviewed frequently to ensure ongoing link integrity.

Note: this step can be automated within the university's content management system.