Strategy

Majid Al Futtaim's shopping malls websites were undergoing a big redesign and development which would sync all malls to use and follow the same structure. The new designs meant that the existing copy was no longer suitable and that new content gaps have been created.

The bigger challenge was creating visibility on the new content requirements across all 16 malls and understanding the effort required to produce all the new content, align it to the new designs, and meet product delivery deadlines.

Ahead of the development roll out of the 16 mall websites, I structured the foundations of a technical content strategy to understand the content landscape and what’s required to align the content to the new designs. The goal was to draw in on content patterns, reusability, global glossary, content components and more to help reduce the production scope and time, and to save the business budget.

Over a 4 week period a team of content strategists and UX writers undertook a series of tasks to help unpack the data:

+ Firstly, we mapped all templates and new features to all malls in a robust matrix which fed into the creation of the content ecosystem along with the brand’s content glossary and taxonomic language. 

+ We then did a very robust content gap analysis using the matrix, followed by a content audit and analysis which provided visibility into the copy that needs to be produced, removed, and updated. This exercise also fed into the dev & upload teams to prepare their workflows accordingly.

+ After understanding the landscape, we were able to identify common patterns in the content, its hierarchies, and frequency of use, which enabled us to create a common content library which turned the production process into a component-led approach, saving ±80 hours of work in production.

+ Through this exercise, we also created economies of scale by creating smart production sheets for all new copy through formulas and auto-generated copy. Without the initial strategy piece, we can assume that the project could’ve taken 23 months to complete however due to the output, the project was re-estimated to be delivered in 7 months.

+ By having greater visibility of the entire content ecosystem, the business had a stronger grip on the role of content, its requirements, and efforts required to successfully launch the new sites on time, before the projects kicked off. 

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