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Establishing Brand Consistency across
Websites
Websites play a critical role in providing
information to customers, the media,
investors, staff and future employees
about services, policies and the latest
products or services. Content must be
clearly written, well-structured, easy to
understand and accessible to all. There
also needs to be consistency in the tone
of voice, the format of content and the
site’s look and feel, so that every page
represents the authoritative and ‘official’
corporate view.
But achieving this level of consistency is
challenging. With numerous authors
from across your organisation
contributing and then updating content,
meeting the required publishing standards and achieving a decent level of brand consistency is not
straightforward. Inevitably individual authors have their own writing styles and varying levels of skill.
It may not be just the websites you won, manage or are operated for your ‘Brand management’. It
also often includes content monitoring across the websites of sales agents, resellers, channel partners
and the like – you may also be keeping an eye on what competitors are saying, or where they may be
using your trademarked terms or IP.
Ensuring consistency on your website requires significant effort from the centre. Unfortunately, time-
stretched web teams usually don’t have the hours in the day to carefully police all content or handhold
new authors in preparing content.
Thankfully there are tactics and strategies which can help.
Publishing guidelines
Establishing clear publishing guidelines will let your authors and publishers know what is expected and
why it is important. You may have your own style guides, publishing standards, polices and such – but
how do you ensure they are being applied consistently, by all – all the time?
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Author training and resources
Once you have set up your guidelines, authors need to be trained on why they are important and how
to apply them. As well as dedicated training sessions, having a site with resources such as “how to”
guides and videos can help. The downside of author training is that it can be resource-intensive for
small central teams, particularly if you have a high turnover of staff and there are regularly new people
to train.
Using page templates
Page templates within your Content Management System (CMS) can also help support your authors
with their writing, encouraging them to stock to the right page format and layout, as well as ensuring
only approved images from a central library are used.
Using automation
Because content is continually changing and being updated, there is always new content to review.
An automated approach is the best way for web teams to monitor where brand guidelines are not
being met in updated and new pages. Automation is a remarkably efficient, cheap and effortless way
to:
Spot issues as they happen or on an ongoing basis and then fix them
Identify which authors might need additional training
Help you inform authors where they have issues, so they learn-as-they-go
Implement a new publishing guideline and identify where there are still gaps
Spot those smaller formatting issues which are harder to identify.
Automation prevents the need for web teams to regularly trawl through the site looking for
issues, an enormously time-consuming activity. Instead Sitemorse automatically identifies
issues and alerts you.
How Sitemorse’s unique brand automation reporting feature helps
As far as we are aware, Sitemorse is one of the only content governance and improvement products
that effectively supports brand consistency and publishing standards through an automated approach.
Sitemorse reports on numerous content and brand issues. Sitemorse’s brand rules also check for
general web management good practices.
For example, you can:
Avoid specific phrases (specified by you)
Identify where page titles are too lengthy
Avoid using special characters in headings
Avoid having generic phases used for link text
Ensure the right format is used for email addresses.
Clients can build their own, additional, organisational, brand rules into Sitemorse. Pages will be
assessed, and issues prioritised. Sitemorse works with clients to review brand, style, and publishing
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guidelines to establish what new, additional, rules could be added, for even greater adherence to
institutional policies and guidelines, through automation.
These additional, institutional rules cut down on the communications and training required to
implement any new rules across an organisation (e.g. a department name change, removal of a
member of staff, new brand guidelines) as any additional rules will be built into the Sitemorse system,
all content assessed against this new criteria, and errors and issues flagged in reports in the usual way.
Sitemorse Example Brand Report
Sitemorse ensure that the basics are covered across an institution first, before adjusting the
fundamental capabilities of the system. Adding in additional, institutional rules further down the line
will then be easier for the user community to adapt to, as they continue onto the next stage of their
continuous improvement journey. Users are then more likely to understand the potential capabilities
of the system, and be able to move, in manageable chunks, away from weekly reporting to continuous
improvement and actionable insight.
How Sitemorse helps websites delivery content, consistency
Checking for brand rules has proved to be an important Sitemorse capability, having the standards
predefined ensures clients from day one can understand where improvements can be made – no need
to spend time understanding and then setting up individual rules.
This feedback from James Steele, Web Manager at Nottingham City Council:
“Maintaining brand consistency across council websites is not easy. Content for Local Government
websites is often provided from colleagues across the organisation, all who have their own style of
writing.
“Sitemorse really helps us provide better consistency across our corporate websites. Weekly reports
make it easy to identify any inconsistencies and help to ensure that no matter who contributes to our
web content, our website has a consistent look and feel.”
Brand consistency is important
Brand consistency and high-quality content are critical for the success of your website. A variety of
methods need to be considered to achieve this including author training. Sitemorse’s automation of
checking for brand consistency is also key, allowing teams to keep on top of changes to content, and
saving vast amounts of time. If you’d like more information, then get in touch!
(https://sitemorse.com/about/contact/)
Source : Sitemorse
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