Content: Designing a Successful Website Part 4of6

Make a list of all the required information sources, services, processes, and other website content you offer (or plan to offer) that can be made available through the Web. Eliminate items that don't directly advance the purpose of your site or may not fulfill audience objectives.

Assess your service offerings by mapping them to the audience based on their needs.

Next step is to categorize the items in your content inventory according to both user needs and the purpose of your site.

If you have content that concerns the graduation process and part of your purpose is to offer that content to your users, then graduation may be a likely category. Continue to group all of your content into their respective categories.

After all the content is categorized, organize the content within each category by its relative importance to users. Finally, name each category with a concise and descriptive title. These will become your main "category" links for your web site.

By completing this process you have collected content that satisfies the needs of your target audience, categorized your content into groups that form the foundation for your site structure, and prioritized the relative importance of the content in each category.