Through almost every website we’ve built over fifteen years, one thing remains true: website content is a bigger job than it seems at the start. Ensuring content is ready and polished for launch demands time commitment, collaboration, and willingness to edit (and then edit some more).
Even with capable project teams, we encourage enlisting support for the planning and execution of large content updates. While more hands make the work lighter, the subtler, more long-lasting benefit is the opportunity for teams to redefine how they create public-facing information with a clear process and new avenues for stakeholder collaboration.
Denim & Steel’s service offerings have come to include content refreshes, which brings extra benefits. Having a hand in content helps our website projects stay on time and budget, and lets us ensure in real time that all the pieces work together to create a well-oiled communication machine.
For each client, we create strategies to help our clients navigate the waters of creating, maintaining and migrating content to their new website—all tailored to the team and project.
Here’s how we did it for the new Royal BC Museum website:
1. Auditing and planning
The RBCM Digital Team set themselves up for success by starting with a full content audit and talking with internal stakeholders about what information was important to keep.
This exercise whittled down the number of pages at launch from 250+ to some 120, and provided an opportunity for the Digital Team to show how they could meet the communication needs of other departments.
2. Setting standards
Since website copywriting and migration duties were split across several people, we established a set of content standards to guide current work and act as a reference post-launch when we’d be less involved. Those standards included easy-to-follow guidelines for the website’s voice and tone, and a comprehensive style guide for keeping pages consistent, readable and accessible.
Deliverable: Voice and tone guidelines & website style guide of best practices
3. Renewing collaborations and buy-in
Standards on their own aren’t useful if there isn’t agreement to follow them. Through co-design workshops, we created a charter that expressed the Digital Team’s roles and how best for other stakeholders to engage them.
The new process would not only make website updates more efficient, but lead to a more cohesive final product over the months and years to come. As the charter was circulated for agreement among stakeholder department heads, it re-introduced the Digital Team as website collaborators and facilitators, rather than gatekeepers.
Deliverable: One-page charter agreed on by Museum stakeholders for managing website requests
4. Hands-on content migration
On most projects, we involve clients in content entry so they can build up their familiarity with the new site and update it with confidence by the time we launch. We find this method far more effective for learning than tutorial sessions that happen outside actual application.
During the content migration phase, the RBCM team became adept with the WordPress custom blocks that we built by using them to create complex, varied pages. That work happened with weekly editorial meetings where everyone had a chance to show-and-tell, ask questions, and troubleshoot together.
Deliverable: In-depth training sessions and weekly content review meetings
5. Testing and refining
Once the content migration was complete, we made sure the website worked well for the museum’s many audiences: Out-of-town visitors, local residents, educators, and Indigenous community members, to name a few. We facilitated several rounds of testing the website with key stakeholder groups, making adjustments from the testing results to fine-tune both website features and content choices.
Deliverable: User tests with a diverse group of stakeholders
A new look and a renewed way of working
The new Royal BC Museum website is now live. We’re as proud of the positive changes behind-the-scenes as much as we are with the website itself. Our work with the Digital Team gave them months of hands-on editing experience before launch and a clear path for handling future requests.
These efforts let the whole team at RBCM move forward with confidence, knowing they have the process, skills, and buy-in from other stakeholders to keep the site feeling as fresh as it does on launch day.
Discover our new website for the Royal BC Museum
Diving into a top cultural destination in BC for one of our most ambitious—and rewarding—projects yet.
Learn more about our services, including website content strategy, copywriting and editing. We offer custom packages to meet your needs and are taking work for Spring 2026.