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Alpha This guidance is in development. You can find current content and publishing guidance on GOV.UK.

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Plan and manage content

Understand content design

Good content design helps people quickly find out what they need to know or do. Users come to GOV.UK to find information or complete a task. The content on GOV.UK should be designed to help users do this.

This guidance sets out some basic principles of good content design and links to further information on each. In summary, well designed GOV.UK content should:

  • start with user needs
  • consider the amount, format and best place to publish your content
  • follow GOV.UK style
  • be kept up to date

Start with user needs

Content design starts by taking a user need and meeting it on GOV.UK in the best way possible.

A user need is something that a user will need to do or find out from government, such as:

  • checking if they’re eligible to claim a benefit
  • registering to vote
  • applying for a business scheme
  • checking their tax code or State Pension
  • applying for a passport or driving licence

Before publishing on GOV.UK, you need to know your users’ needs and design your content to meete them. Read more about this in the guidance on identifying user needs.

Consider the amount, format and best place to publish your content

Depending on what your user needs are, you may need to:

  • reduce the amount of content you plan to publish
  • split one big piece of content into smaller pieces
  • change the format of the content
  • put some content in the mainstream area of the site
  • remove content, to avoid duplication or conflicting information
  • publish your content elsewhere, like a blog, partner site or social media

Read more about this in the guidance on planning new GOV.UK content.

Design clear and accessible content

Good GOV.UK content is clear, written in plain English and optimised for the web. It must be accessible to anybody who needs to use it.

Our style guide and tone of voice guidance are designed to make our content meet these standards. Check that your content is written in line with them before you publish it.

You should also check the guidance on making your content accessible - this will help with the accessibility of headings, links and other formatting elements.

Content maintenance

Content on GOV.UK should either be:

  • current, meeting a user need and kept up to date
  • no longer current but kept as a record of the government’s past work

Read the guidance on managing existing GOV.UK content to understand how you should maintain your content.