Build a website your team can actually update

Before choosing a content system, ask the person who updates your site to show you their last three changes. Watch how they post a job, update a location, or replace a team photo. Those jobs tell you what the editor needs to make easy.

Give repeated content a home

If you run four locations, give each location a record with its address, hours, and contact information. Let the location page and the directory read from that record. When holiday hours change, your team has one place to update them.

Use the same approach for content that follows a pattern, like job listings or case studies. Decide which details are required and what should happen when a detail is missing. A case study with no client quote should still look finished.

Let the editor see the page before it goes live

Give the person who writes the update a draft and a preview. They should be able to check whether a headline wraps awkwardly on a phone, whether the image works in its crop, and whether a link goes to the right place.

Agree on which edits need approval. A typo fix may be ready to publish immediately. A new pricing page may need a second person to check it.

Test with an ordinary edit

Ask the person who will use the editor to publish a test job and correct its closing date. Let them do it without prompting. If they need to find the same date in several places, or ask a developer to fix the layout, you’ve found something to improve before launch.