Many website projects start with design. The homepage mock-up is approved with placeholder headlines, the templates are built, and only then does anyone turn to the words. That is when the launch date slides: the service descriptions don’t fit the layouts, the photos don’t exist and the person who knows the prices is away. A website content plan prevents that.
Content is one of the ten ingredients of a good website, and the one most often left until last. The plan brings it forward: it lists every page, who writes it, what it needs and when it’s due, and it is agreed before design starts.
The short answer
To prepare content for a new website:
- Take a content inventory. Decide, with evidence from Google Analytics and Search Console, what to keep, rewrite, merge or cut.
- Turn the sitemap into a content plan: one row per page, with a writer, an expert, one approver and due dates.
- Brief every page before writing starts: audience, the page’s job and the questions it must answer.
- Gather the slow material early: photos, proof, prices, policies and legal text.
- Write in one voice, then translate, with native review in every language.
- Agree sign-off rules: named approvers, fixed review windows, limited rounds.
Set due dates backwards from launch, and finish real copy for the pages each template is designed around first.
Why content needs a plan of its own
It decides the design. A four-word headline and a fourteen-word one need different layouts, as do three services and eleven. Placeholder text hides that until real copy arrives and approved templates need reworking.
It lives in people’s heads. Sales knows the objections, operations the process, finance the prices, legal the privacy policy. Few have “website content” in their job description, so without a plan it becomes everyone’s second priority.
It can’t be fully handed over. A writer can interview your experts and polish the words, but can’t invent your prices, process or proof. Without deadlines, that part becomes the invisible delay behind many website projects that fail.
Step 1: Take a content inventory
A content inventory lists every page you have, with a decision next to each, so a redesign keeps the pages that quietly work. For a new site, list the brochures, proposals, sales decks and stock answers your team already uses.
Build the list
Export every URL from your CMS, XML sitemap or a site crawler into a spreadsheet, then add for each page:
- Owner and date last updated
- Views (Pages and screens report) and sessions that begin there (Landing page report) in Google Analytics, over 12 months so seasonal pages survive
- Clicks, impressions and top queries from Google Search Console’s Performance report
- External links from Search Console’s Links report, which shows a sample rather than every link
- Enquiries that start on it, if conversion tracking is set up
On a large site, judge templated pages such as products or listings on a sample of each template.
Decide: keep, rewrite, merge or cut
| Decision | Choose it when | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | Accurate, on-brand and still earning clicks or enquiries | Light edit; keep the URL if you can |
| Rewrite | The topic matters but the copy is vague or dated, or it gets impressions and few clicks | Brief and write it as a new page |
| Merge | Several pages answer the same question or compete for the same searches | Combine into one stronger page; redirect the rest |
| Cut | No meaningful traffic, links or enquiries, and nothing in it is still needed | Remove it; redirect to the closest relevant page if one exists |
Don’t decide on traffic alone. A page with modest numbers may be the one sales sends to every serious lead, and legal pages such as your privacy notice stay whatever their traffic. Ask sales and support which pages they share before cutting anything, and add every merged or removed URL to the redirect plan. The website migration SEO checklist covers protecting rankings when addresses change.
Step 2: Build the website content plan, page by page
Start from the new sitemap. Every page gets one row, including the ones people forget: thank-you pages, the 404 page, form confirmation emails and the privacy notice.
What each row needs
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Page | Name, planned URL, and keep, rewrite, merge or new |
| People | One writer, a subject expert who checks the facts, one approver |
| Assets | Photos, video, downloads or quotes it needs |
| Languages | Every language it will be published in |
| Dates and status | Brief, draft, approval and translation deadlines, and where the page stands today |
Keep the plan in one shared spreadsheet, not email threads, with one owner on your side who makes sure every page gets written.
Who writes website content?
Three models work, and many projects mix them.
| Model | Works well when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Your team writes | People can write clearly and protect the time | Drafts slip behind day jobs; authors sound different |
| A copywriter writes from interviews | Your experts explain better out loud than on paper | Interviews and fact checks still take experts’ time |
| Split by page | A writer takes the homepage and service pages; insiders draft specs, FAQs and policies | Someone must still edit it all into one voice |
AI can speed up drafting in any model if it works from your material. Whichever you choose, agree it in writing: quotes often assume you supply every word, which is why content belongs among the questions to ask before hiring a web designer.
Set website copy deadlines backwards from launch
Work backwards from launch, tying each deadline to a project milestone rather than an optimistic date:
- Launch: content live in every language, links and forms tested.
- Content entry: approved, translated copy and optimised images in the CMS.
- Translation and native review, from approved source copy only.
- Approval by each page’s named approver.
- Drafts, written against an approved brief.
- Pilot pages: the homepage and one representative page per template, with real content, before those templates are designed.
Step 6 is easy to miss and expensive to skip: designing the service template around your longest real service description costs far less than discovering after the build that it doesn’t fit. The website project plan shows how these milestones fit around design and development.
Step 3: Brief every page before anyone writes
A page brief is half a page that tells the writer what the page is for:
- Audience: who lands here, from where, and what they already know
- The page’s job: the one action you want next
- Questions it must answer, in the order buyers ask them, taken from sales calls, enquiry emails and search queries
- Facts and proof it can use: price drivers, process, examples, certifications
- Search intent and primary keyword (see keyword research and search intent)
- Links in and out: which pages send people here, and where it sends them next
An example. A cleaning company’s office contracts page: facilities managers replacing a provider that let them down; the job is booking a site visit; it must answer what’s included, how staff are vetted, who covers sickness and how pricing works; proof is two client references and an insurance certificate. A writer can work from that without a meeting.
Approve the brief, not just the draft. When the approver signs off the brief first, arguments about audience and purpose happen over half a page, and draft feedback focuses on accuracy and clarity. For the writing itself, see writing website copy with AI and how to write a service page.
Step 4: Gather the slow material early
Writing is rarely the slowest part. Material that depends on other people’s permission or calendars is, so request it at the start.
| Material | Who usually holds it | Why it takes time |
|---|---|---|
| Photos of people, premises, products and projects | Marketing, operations | Shoots need scheduling, and people should agree to appear |
| Case studies, testimonials, client logos | Sales, account managers | Clients need to approve what you say and whether you can name them |
| Prices, or what changes them | Finance, sales | Publishing forces decisions that were easy to postpone |
| Delivery, warranty and cancellation policies | Operations, customer service | They often exist as habits, not written text |
| Privacy policy, cookie notice, terms | Legal or compliance | They need professional review, and depend on the forms and tools you use |
Stock photos are fine as placeholders if the plan says who replaces them. Plan alt text too: a short description of each meaningful image for people who can’t see it, required by WCAG’s first success criterion (1.1.1 Non-text Content, Level A). Decorative images get an empty alt. Whoever knows what the photo shows should write it.
Step 5: Write in one voice, then plan translation properly
Keep one voice across every writer
When a copywriter writes the homepage, sales the service pages and support the FAQ, the site sounds like three companies. Give every writer one voice guide with example sentences and a glossary of product names, and have one editor read every page. The website branding guide shows how to write your voice down, and website storytelling carries it into your about page and case studies.
Give every language real time
On a multilingual website, each language is a site in its own right, not a finishing touch:
- Translate approved copy only. Anything changed later has to be changed again in every language.
- Localise. Examples, units, currencies and the phrases people search for can differ between markets.
- Book native review by someone who knows your industry and catches the wrong terms a machine can miss.
- Include the small text: page titles, meta descriptions, URL slugs, alt text, form labels, error messages and confirmation emails.
Give each language its own translator, reviewer and dates in the plan. How to plan a multilingual website covers the full workflow.
Step 6: Agree a sign-off flow that doesn’t stall
Approvals stall when many people hold a veto and nobody has a deadline. Agree at kick-off:
- One approver per page, plus one for the site as a whole. Everyone else is consulted.
- Fixed review windows, such as three working days per round.
- Limited rounds, such as two, with one person merging comments and settling conflicts before they reach the writer.
- Feedback against the brief. “This doesn’t answer the pricing question” helps; “I don’t like it” doesn’t.
- A rule for silence: whether no reply by the deadline counts as approval. Legal text always needs an explicit yes.
Approve the words in a shared document laid out with the page’s headings, then check them on the preview site for fit only. Reopening approved copy mid-build turns small delays into long ones.
A website content checklist to agree before design starts
What to do next
Content delays launches when it is treated as the last step. Give it the same owners, briefs and deadlines as design and development from day one, and it stops being the thing everyone waits for. Start with the inventory and the sitemap.
If you’re choosing who to build with, bring the plan, or just the inventory, to the first conversation. It makes it easy to agree who supplies what, and what the timeline depends on. Talk to us about what your website needs, and if you’re replacing an existing site, our website redesign process starts by auditing what your current pages already do well.