By GIC Published on January 10th, 2025

Last updated on January 10th, 2025

Besides, measuring success in our world isn’t just about clicks; it’s about real-world outcomes like providing services, raising awareness, or changing behaviors! It’s a balancing act of precision, creativity, and strategy to meet the public’s needs effectively. How can we improve our approach on our online communications in the new year? We’ve got a few suggestions!

The key for successful New Year’s resolutions is to set SMART goals:

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Here’s a list of five resolutions tailored for web editors aiming to improve their craft and efficiency, and one principle applies to all of them: 2025 is the year to get website review time built into your schedule!

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Why It’s Important: Planning ensures that your agency communicates consistently and aligns with state priorities, such as events, deadlines, and seasonal campaigns. It’s also crucial that you add regular content review sessions to your schedule and to those who contribute to your website. If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t feel as important and invariably gets pushed back.

How to Do It: Schedule posts or updates around dates that are significant to your agency, such as registration deadlines or events. Block out recurring time on your schedule for reviewing content in all the ways in this list, starting with a monthly calendar review.

How Often to Do It: Thirty minutes per month, near the end of every month, looking ahead to the next.

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Why It’s Important:

Residents rely on our Delaware websites for accurate, up-to-date information. Outdated content can lead to misinformation or reduced trust in your agency. Perhaps more importantly, scheduling a regular review of that content will help you catch other UI obstacles, and will help inspire your future content.

How to Do It:

• Pick a few pages each week to review, starting with your highest-profile content
• Update statistics, dates, and links to reflect current information.
• Consider highlighting timely or impactful news as it pertains to your agency’s response or services.

Remember to:

• Simplify Your Content. Use plain, conversational language. Break up chunks of text with bullet points and make sure there’s enough white space around the text.
• Maintain a Consistent Tone and Style. A unified tone across all Delaware state agencies reinforces trust and professionalism while reflecting the state’s commitment to serving its residents.
• Use visuals to Enhance Engagement.

How Often to Do It:

30 minutes per week. It’s easier to eat the elephant in small bites! If you run over a little because you’re being so productive? All the better!

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Why It’s Important: Delaware agencies must ensure all residents, including those with disabilities, can access critical information and services.

How to Do It:

How Often to Do It:

It will only take a few minutes, so run a scan once a month, ahead of your scheduled content freshen-up. Identifying issues ahead can help maximize your efficiency and help you improve your content more effectively.

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Why It’s Important: Conducting user research helps you understand your website’s users. That will help you make better decisions about which information is most important and useful.

How to Do It:

• Start small. You don’t need to do a huge research project right away. Start by conducting a few simple interviews or surveys with your users. Some starter tools to consider are Survey Monkey (for online surveys) and Mentimeter (for gathering feedback during presentations and meetings).
• Define your audience. Having internal feedback is great, but you’ll get the most useful information by talking to the people that are most likely to use your product or service. You can reach these users through in-person conversations, or social media.
• Get help from experts. If you need help with user research, there are many resources available. You can hire a user researcher, consult with a UX design agency (like us at the GIC!), or take a free user research course like this one.

How Often to Do It: Once per year, at least, as a project. This project can include some or all of the suggestions above, but will require some planning and some time. The goal is to take a fresh temperature of your audience every year to help freshen your content appropriately.

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Why It’s Important: Never stop learning! It will benefit you personally and professionally, and your increased knowledge will help serve Delawareans better.

How to Do It: As a web editor aiming to enhance your skill set, consider taking the following free online courses:

How Often to Do It: This is a personal improvement resolution, so you’ll need to dedicate non-work time to these efforts. But if you can commit to an hour or two every week, you will run through these courses more quickly than you might expect. They can help you refine your writing abilities, streamline your editing skills, and gain more understanding of the inner workings of your agency website.

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Remember, the key to creating good habits is repetition and dedication. Build website review and maintenance into your calendar and this year you will stay on top of it like never before!

Don’t hesitate to reach out to your friends at the GIC for help!

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