Whether it’s a random Wednesday or the most special day ever (technically speaking, February 29th), a digital product always has multiple active goals associated with it that people across departments are working on.

After the quick growth stage at the beginning, leaders are eager for a future beyond maintaining the functionality of their apps and putting out fires.

From company-wide goals to department-specific goals, many gerunds–hiring, launching, increasing, improving, scaling–are involved in the massive operations required to keep the websites and apps we use running.

Where does content consistency fit into company goals?

I’ve consulted over 30 companies and collaborated with stakeholders across design, engineering, product, marketing, data, and QA, and these are some questions I’ve answered frequently:

• Where does content consistency fit into company goals?
• Is consistency in product content that important?
• How consistent is our product’s content?
• How do we measure the level of consistency in the product?
• What are the success and failure metrics of content consistency?
• Which team should “own” consistency in a product?

How consistent is the product? To evaluate product content consistency, start by assessing whether teams share a common perception of it.

How consistent is the product? To answer this question, I begin by gauging overall sentiment, not relying on analytics or research yet.

In initial conversations, I’m assessing whether teams share a common perception of the product’s consistency. How does the product team feel about it? What about marketing, engineering, data, sales, and customer service departments?

Most companies aren’t actively thinking of content consistency and how it may be affecting business goals. Unless the issue stares them in the face in unignorable ways.

When content consistency becomes unignorable

A larger team completes more work and brings diverse perspectives. But despite any similarities, people think and speak differently, which shows up in the product language across product descriptions, error messages, button copy, landing pages, email notifications, and pricing pages.

For example, the Chinese language doesn’t really have plural forms. Jay, a Chinese-speaking engineer, occasionally writes interface copy. Would you blame her for omitting the plural in the “5 entries moved to Trash” confirmation message?

On its own, a missing “-s” or “-es” isn’t going to make or break your product’s user experience. But this example is one of thousands of language variations in product content.

It’s one person, one grammar topic (removing the plural form), and one interaction (confirmation message).

As the team expands, so do content inconsistencies. But “big teams” are just one scenario where inconsistencies can become more frequent and noticeable.

Consider all your interface copy and the variations in product content created by different engineers, product managers, and designers, particularly regarding writing style.

I’ve outlined common scenarios where ensuring content consistency becomes unignorable, sorted from least to most urgent.

1. Big teams
2. Rapid release schedules for features
3. Breaking into a new market
4. Complaints from customer service reps
5. Difficulties maintaining accurate, up-to-date documentation
6. Disagreements between departments regarding terminology
7. Sales feedback
8. User complaints

What to do when content consistency becomes an issue

Which team “owns” consistency in a product? This question is part of the problem since content consistency standards and success should be shared across teams. So, if you have some of the issues above with varying levels of severity, what do you do?

Enter: The Little Language Models process, a simple but effective digital organizing system focused on key actions, user needs, and business goals 🗃️

This process isn’t proprietary; it’s based on fundamental design principles and a solid understanding of what makes content findable, understandable, and relevant.

Developed through practical experience and refined through each client engagement, data point, and product, it’s a system I’ve used to consistently deliver successful outcomes for my clients. It always starts with an audit, or an AIA:

• Analysis of the current platform structure: voice, writing style, and content hierarchy parameters in key workflows
• Interviews with users and stakeholders to gain an understanding of platform needs, goals, and pain points
• Analytics review of heatmaps, conversions, bounce rates, screen recordings, visits, and search behavior

This discovery audit is conducted to identify gaps, redundancies, and areas for improvement. It facilitates the clear definition of the problem statement and potential opportunities, enabling the development of an effective action plan. The plan may not involve me or a consultant at all, but it is a plan that gets you to where you need to go, which is only achievable once the destination has been clearly defined.

To unlock your next stage of growth, the content needs to be clear, useful, and consistent across interfaces. The content hierarchy needs to match user intent and business goals, and be iterated upon continuously in a close-knit collaboration between product, design, engineering, data, and marketing.

If your work explores similar themes, tell me:
What other scenarios make content consistency unavoidable?
Who “owns” consistency in your organization?

AI Policy: I personally write each draft and final copy on this website. All content reflects my own thinking, ideas, style, and craft.  I do not use AI such as ChatGPT or other LLMs to generate articles. Occasionally, I ask AI (such as Formalizer or Equativ) to summarize or re-state my own ideas and may restructure sections based on the response.