Where a standard content writing project calls for the ‘fluffing up’ of content by telling a story and setting the scene, this project was all about simplicity.

UoL asked us to pare things back, tell users only what they needed to know, and direct them straight to where they needed to go.

Brand voice wasn’t lacking – the university had existing guidelines – but content design and UX came first. 

There were two main challenges when rewriting the pages for accessibility. I had to:

• Read multiple pages, digest large amounts of information and work out what I could cut or combine to reduce the number of pages needed
• Figure out what order the sections should appear in, i.e. what was most useful for a student to know first? That they should apply for a visa? Or that the visa is only valid for a limited time before they need to apply for a different one?

Working closely with the UoL content team, I reduced the amount of content on each page and made sure the remaining content worked much harder.

The new content directed students straight to the answers to their questions without leading them around the houses.

A final aspect of this three-month project was making sure that any internal links were useful or helpful as part of an ‘always forward’ journey for student users.

Internal links can prove VERY frustrating for users if they're taken down a rabbit hole that leaves them further away from the answer they’re looking for.

I made sure this didn’t happen by cross-checking all links provided in the existing pages against the new pages we were creating (and, of course, the UoL team went on to check and apply the content to the new site).

You might wonder why I’m even bothering to tell you this. It’s because when you commission a content writer, you don't just get a writer – you get a strategist, researcher, writer and quality controller in one.