Home > Requirements & Best Practices > Top 10 Best Practices

1. Meet all laws, requirements, policies, and other directives for public websites

• Federal laws and regulations
• Requirements and best practices checklists

2. Document and communicate your web governance structure – including roles, relationships, responsibilities, rules, and review processes

• Management and governance
• Governance self-assessment checklist
  (PDF, 19KB, 1 pg, 8/2008 requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

3. Develop, document and implement a strategic plan that incorporates visionary changes and corrects existing problems

• Outline for a strategic plan

4. Identify, improve, and feature top tasks

• Designing task-focused websites

5. Create and manage content effectively and efficiently; create content once and deliver it many ways

• Managing content
• Plainlanguage.gov

6. Collaborate within your agency and across government to manage content and eliminate duplication

• Don't duplicate content

7. Follow usability best practices and do usability testing continuously

• Usability and design
• Usability.gov

8. Evaluate the effectiveness of your website and make improvements based on what you learn

• Ways to evaluate your site
• Evaluating your website/web metrics

9. Make sure the public can find your content

• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media and Web 2.0 in Government

10. Create opportunities for the public to interact with their government

• "Contact Us" Pages
• Citizen Engagement

Content Lead: Sheila Campbell and Rachel Flagg