One EPA Web Principles that Guide Content Development

One EPA Web is EPA’s way of organizing web content by priority environmental topics, rather than by EPA’s organizational structure (as done prior to 2010).

Web content is developed based on the top 1-3 audiences for each priority environmental topic, and their top tasks. Content is guided by asking:

Who is looking for information,
What are they looking for, and
What are they trying to accomplish?

On this page:

Critical Terms
How Do We Organize Content Under the One EPA Web?
Ongoing One EPA Web Priorities
For More Information

Critical Terms

One EPA Web: One EPA Web builds EPA.gov into ONE website organized by one set of priorities, written in one voice, and managed by one set of guiding principles. The goal is to improve the delivery of priority messages and information to the public and ensure people are able to find the right information to accomplish their tasks online. One EPA Web consists of:

An EPA home page that focuses on the public's needs and interests.
A model that organizes EPA's web content into topic-based groups called Microsites.

Microsites: Microsites are comprehensive sites that bring web content together on a priority topic from across EPA into a single, consolidated site with self-contained navigation. Microsites often include multimedia and social media outreach tools.

Web Areas: The organizing principle is the division of One EPA Web into "areas." An area covers some cohesive topic or set of materials: it is a collection of pages dedicated to a topic. Microsites are the format used to organize web area content.

Responsive Design: design and development that respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The Drupal WebCMS implements EPA's look and feel in a responsive design.

Web Content Management System (WebCMS): The web content management system holds One EPA Web and presents EPA web presence at EPA.gov.

How Do We Organize Content Under the One EPA Web?

To focus web resources on priority topics and audiences, all Web content on EPA.gov is developed and maintained based on

Priority environmental topics, such as CFLs and Columbia River (rather than by EPA office/region)
Top audiences and their top tasks
Standard designs: the Web content management system (WebCMS) provides templates, which do not allow local styles
- All EPA public web content must adhere to the EPA Web Standards, the U.S. Web Design System guidelines, and the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act.

Content is developed and organized using the Microsite format:

Microsites: Microsites are comprehensive sites that bring Web content together on a priority topic from across EPA into a single, consolidated site with self-contained navigation. Microsites often include multimedia and social media outreach tools. Examples: Columbia River, Nutrient Pollution.

Assessing and removing content that is no longer needed is an essential part of ongoing maintenance. Editors should assess their content to determine what pages or documents may be no longer meeting the needs of their top audiences and top tasks, and consider removing or archiving some. See: EPA's Procedure: Web Content Review

Ongoing One EPA Priorities

The focus of One EPA Web is continuous improvement of our web areas and web content using a suite of tools. OPA/OWC and OMS/WCSD are developing web area "health checks" and spot-checking metrics for different web areas so that we can provide recommendations and help offices and Regions continually improve their web areas.

Health checks focus on a number of metrics, some of which are driven by data found in the web analytics tools that EPA uses:

Health checks will show you the locations within these tools of where you can view metrics specific to your web area. You can also take training on how to use these analytics tools.

These metrics include:

Home page bounce rate,
Pages per session,
Average session duration,
Ease of use on mobile devices,
Number of broken links,
Number of misspelled words,
Quality of metadata, and
Compliance with Section 508.

For More Information

Web Guide and WebCMS Training assist EPA's Web community with meeting standards, using best practices, understanding WebCMS functions, and presenting better content that meets audience needs.

Find the appropriate EPA Communications and Web Staff contact for your office.