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Developing a web publishing policy

By Nicole Aebi-Moyo

What should you include in a web publishing policy? This article will explain and covers: responsibilities; budget; style guide; accessibility & usability; cross-platform compatibility; links policy; advertising and sponsorship; data protection; and evaluation and review.

Why have a policy?

A web publishing policy should describe how your website is developed and maintained according to a common set of principles. It is the document you should refer to whenever new content is planned, you’re revising current content or even thinking about an entirely new section. Anyone who works on your organisation’s website should be familiar with your web publishing policy. It should be essential reading for your content authors, web designers and web developers, whether that's three different people or one person wearing lots of hats!

A good web publishing policy should underpin all of your website work: it will detail responsibilities; give guidance on what content should appear on the web; and even outline how that content should be written. And of course any policy must include a section on accessibility.

Exactly what appears in your web publishing policy will depend on your organisation’s needs, but as a guide you might want to include the following:

• responsibilities
• budget
• style guide
• accessibility & usability
• cross-platform compatibility
• links policy
• advertising and sponsorship
• data protection
• evaluation and review

We're now going to take a look at each of these in turn.

Responsibilities

Your website is perhaps the most visible aspect of your organisation. Theoretically it could be seen by millions of people across the world. It is therefore crucial that you have a clear policy outlining who is responsible for what. In small organisations it's highly likely that one person will be responsible for the entire website and all aspects of developing and maintaining it. Indeed, this might form only part of their job description so it is even more crucial to have systems and processes in place to ensure your website gives a good impression of your organisation.

Who is responsible for writing content? Who has editorial control of that content? Who is responsible for design? You policy should answer all these questions and explain how these three different elements fit together.

Your policy should also outline who has final sign off on content and design; where does the buck stop? This could be particularly important for organisations with blogs or who use content management systems where many people contribute content. You’ll need some sort of process for ensuring editorial control whatever the means of maintaining your website.

Budget

Maintaining and developing your website will cost you money. Budgeting for it has to be someone's responsibility. What will that budget include? Who is authorised to spend it? What you include in this section will depend very much on how your organisation operates and how you manage your website. Just because you use volunteers, for example, does not mean you don't need to consider budget questions.

You’ll definitely need to think about the cost of hosting (although some providers do now offer free hosting to charities) and the cost of your domain name, but you might also want to factor in: buying in external technical help; buying specific software; staff time for maintenance; and so on.

Style guide

Everyone who publishes a website should have a style guide. This could form part of an overall style guide for every publication your organisation produces or it could be a stand alone document just for your website.

A style guide ensures consistency which will make your site look professional and present a good image of your organisation. If you've not developed a style guide before, developing one for your website could be a useful exercise for your organisation as a whole as it will make you think about your organisation's brand and identity.

A style guide should cover both content and design of a website. In terms of design, it should include guidance on the use of your logo, the use of images and colours, the use of templates and any other design elements that your website might include. In terms of content, your guide should outline things like the use of abbreviations, the use of punctuation, how standard words should be formatted (e-mail or email) and so on. It should also detail your use of jargon and generally outline how to write content for websites -  the Knowledgebase article Writing for the Web.

Accessibility & usability

Accessibility and usability are closely linked: accessibility is concerned with specific issues related to disability; usability is more to do with the general user experience. However you need to consider these two aspects of your website together to produce a truly great website.

Your policy should outline your organisation’s position and commitment to ensuring your site is both accessible and usable. Whilst you probably won’t want to go into a lot of detail, you might give some examples of how you’ll ensure your site is accessible, and outline what standards you’ll aim to reach.

Your policy should also outline how you plan on testing whether your site is accessible and usable.

You can find out more from the following Knowledge Base articles:
Web Accessibility and the Law, Writing a Brief for a Website, Web Accessibility Resources.

You might also consider contacting AbilityNet who offer advice on making websites accessible.

Cross-platform compatibility

Not everyone uses a computer running the latest windows software, or uses Internet Explorer to look at websites. There are many browsers and you need to be sure that anyone wanting to look at your site, no matter how, gets to see something that works. Does your site work on a mobile phone for example? What about someone using an Apple Mac computer? You also need to think about people with slow connections: they might not appreciate having lots of images on the site.

Whilst you might not have the technical know-how to test whether your site works across a variety of platforms, your policy should include details of how you ensure it will be tested, perhaps by using volunteers or paying for outside help.

Links internal and external

The web is all about links so this section of your policy is crucial. Your policy should explain how internal pages should be linked: will you include links to other pages within the text, at the bottom of each page, or some where else entirely? Whatever you choose, you need to be consistent across the site so visitors know what to expect.

You also need to be clear about when you’ll link to external sites. If you have a page specifically for useful resources, how will you decide which organisations or sites to link to? If you have a policy, you’ll be able to deal with requests to link to other people’s sites consistently and clearly.

Advertising and sponsorship

Many sites generate money by selling advertising space or promoting their sponsors. As with any other publication you might sell advertising in, you need to have a policy stating who you’ll take adverts from. You might decide that you’ll take adverts from anyone or you might be quite specific about the sorts of companies and organisations you’re willing to promote.

Data protection

Websites can be great ways to collect data about your supporters which means you have to consider data protection in your policy. Visitors to your site need to be told what you plan on doing with their data. For example, if you have a form that people fill in to ask a question, or sign up to a campaign, you need to say what will happen to their details. If you want to use their details for other purposes, such as sending membership information or asking for donations, you have to give people the option of saying whether they’d want that or not.

You might also want to think about whether your site uses cookies. Whilst many people don’t completely understand what a cookie is, many are concerned about them when it comes to privacy. If your site does use cookies, and your website developer should know, then you’ll need to give some explanation of why, and ensure that your site will work even if people choose to turn them off.

You can find out more from the Knowledge Base articles Introduction to the Data Protection Act and Data Protection Policies.

Evaluation and review

Maintaining a website is a bit like painting your house: the job is never finished. You can’t just tick it off your list as job done. You should review and evaluate your website on a regular basis. Your policy should explain how often you’ll review and evaluate your site and what techniques you’ll use. Will you survey visitors to the site? Or perhaps hold a focus group of users. Maybe you’ll ask your trustees, staff and volunteers for feedback.

One thing you’ll probably want to look at in quite a lot of detail though are your website statistics. These can throw a lot of light on who uses your site, how they find you, which pages they find most interesting, which pages they don’t and so on. Get familiar with your statistics and see if you can spot any trends over the months as they go by.

Further resources

Webstyleguide.com – a detailed look at what you could include in a website style guide.

AbilityNet – an organisation who can give advice and information on ICT accessibility.

Monash University's Web publishing policy - A great example.