UX Glossary | C
Content inventory
Also: Content catalogue, Content index
A catalogue of the digital content you already have, with a row of attributes for each page or asset.
A content inventory is a complete list of what a site or product contains. One row per page, document, video or image, with columns such as title, URL, owner, content type, last updated and where it sits in the structure. It is usually a spreadsheet, and it is deliberately dull.
What it is for
You cannot restructure what you cannot see. Before a redesign or a migration, the inventory tells you how much content there is, who is responsible for it, and how much of it is duplicated or abandoned. It also gives the team a shared fact base. Arguments about “we only have about two hundred pages” end quickly when the count says four thousand.
Inventory versus site map
A site map shows the intended or current structure as a hierarchy. An inventory is the flat, exhaustive list underneath it, including the pages no navigation links to. Those orphaned pages are often the most interesting finding.
In practice
A crawler can build the first draft in minutes, but it will miss content behind logins, PDFs and anything in a separate system, so someone has to walk the edges by hand. Keep the attributes few and useful. Twenty columns nobody fills in is worse than six that are accurate.
The inventory is the input, not the answer. Judging the quality of each item is a separate step, the content audit, and mixing the two is how projects stall in a spreadsheet for a month.