The Importance of Content in Website Design
In this article we discuss how the website design process benefits from well prepared content.
Whether designing a website, brochure or an advertisement, as with all practical design, form should always follow function. If you start by designing and then afterwards try to crow-bar the necessary information into that design then it generally doesn’t work out well. With that in mind the best way to start designing a website is by having all of the finalised text content at your disposal and to make sure that you have a thorough understanding of it.
In the past I’ve had many clients who have instructed me to go ahead and design their websites using filler content as they had not yet had time to prepare the actual content but wanted to get the project moving. As the design agency it is tempting to agree to this arrangement as the last thing that you want to do is delay a project. Especially as projects that delay for too long have a tendency to fizzle out and be cancelled. So the designer goes ahead and pastes in the Lorem Ipsum text into their nice new design. Inevitably however what happens is that when the client does work out what they want the content to be, it generally doesn’t tally up with the improvised content. For example the design may only make sense if a small amount of text is used in a certain column, or two areas of text are so differing in size that the intended design looks imbalanced. The design then becomes compromised or has to be redesigned from scratch.
When provided with the finalised content from the outset the designer can see exactly how much text there is. If there are some hefty chunks of text then the designer can break them down into more visually appealing sections. The design should also be relevant and expressive of the content which is impossible to do if one is just using Latin filler text.
This being said it can be greatly beneficial to the project if the client is open to suggested content changes from the designer if they feel certain areas of the content are too sparse or too stodgy. For example the use of bullet pointed key facts could help to break up an unwieldy chunk of text and keep the web page more visually appealing for the reader.
This is easier said than done though as writing content for a website can be quite a daunting challenge for the client who in most cases has had no experience with this skill set. This is often the reason that the task is put off for as long as possible.
Harbour Studios offers content writing services to help clients with precisely this challenge. Each industry and each business has its own individual narrative and own specialist knowledge and information which needs to be accurately conveyed through the website. We work with the client collate this industry knowledge and present the information on the website in a clear and concise style designed to connect with their businesses key demographic. We achieve this result through a series of meetings, back and forth Q&A sessions by email and finally, if required, a few rounds of revisions.
If you are interested in moving your website project forward with professionally written content then please contact Harbour Studios for more information.