Website is a new-age brick-and-mortar for businesses. In today’s digital era, an effective web presence is critical for your business growth.
Netizens turn to their mobile phone or laptops to find out whether you have what they want, whether you can cater to their requirements, and if they can trust you.
Your web address is like a window that lets potential customers peek in and get all the information they desire.
Furthermore, it opens the doors to a world of possibilities for attracting more customers, building meaningful relationships, and turning them into your advocates.
Content and design are two crucial components that work together to create an accessible interface for your audience.
But what should you focus on first – content or design? And why does it even matter?
Let’s dig a little deeper…
Content is the backbone of the web
Find this image fascinating?
Not so much?
After all, it’s just some words and some links.
Well, this is the world’s first-ever website, published in 1991 by Tim-Berners Lee.
While this image is a testament to a revolution, it is essential to notice the first sentence written on this webpage.
“The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative to give universal access to a large universe of documents.”
The website’s purpose was to allow a person to access a document or piece of content, indicating that content is the backbone of the world of the internet.
The World Wide Web was and still inherently is a content-first system. Even today, the websites like Wikipedia and Craigslist are all about content and are successful without an actual design.
However, we are sitting in times of far-evolved versions of the web. Today, visuals dominate the first impressions of websites pushing content to the backseat. Hence, it is no surprise that our brains have become wired to think of the design first.
Design cannot replace the content
Your website is not just for selling. It is for solving your audience’s problems. Content is the medium that helps you communicate the solution through text, videos, or photos.
While the design does the job of attracting attention, the onus of holding that attention still lies primarily with the content.
Furthermore, content is essential to help your audience with all the information they need at different stages of their buyer journey, for example:
- What you have to offer
- How can your offerings solve their problems, and at what price
- How can they obtain your offerings
- What are the risks and benefits of dealing with you
- Why you are a better choice than your competitors
- What others think about you
Design alone cannot communicate all this information. The design complements the content to make the info eye-catching and more accessible.
The issues with approaching design before content
Imagine you are looking to get a website made for your business.
You find a developer who is going to build your perfect website. In your brief, you’re likely to give references to the website designs you visualize your website to be like.
Next, you may discuss the pages you want to include, colors, and other design elements.
Though you might have an idea about what should go into the pages, you are unlikely to stress over it until the design is finalized.
The point is that the glamour of design often makes us take content for granted. Prioritizing design over content gives rise to some critical issues, such as:
1. Texts going haywire
Your website’s design is ready. It looks stunning. Now it’s time to replace the “Lorem ipsums” with the actual text.
Uh oh… The texts don’t fit as they should. The length of the actual text is not the same as the placeholder text.
Moreover, the design looks awkward, and you have to rework the content.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to rework the content, you are left with a design that is anything but what you imagined.
2. Information compromise
When the texts do not fit the design, it leads to a bigger issue. If you lack time and resources, you might find yourself compromising on the content.
To make the content fit into the placeholders, you will have to chop off important details.
Moreover, you are also likely to discover that you missed out on some crucial sections. You must either rework the design to incorporate the missing pieces or leave the information altogether.
3. Information overload
In contrast with information compromise, sometimes you may encounter information overload on your website.
On the one hand, too much content in an indigestible format is sure to overwhelm the readers. On the other hand, if you do not have the text to fill the designated area, you end up with an unattractive website due to extra space.
4. Substandard user experience
If you don’t plan content, it will most certainly lead to a substandard, if not terrible, user experience.
It is essential to determine how and where to display information to evoke a positive user experience and incorporate all the necessary information.
Thinking about design before content makes you overlook the aspects of user experience that only content can enable.
5. Opportunity cost
Whether you go on to rework the content or the design, it will add to costs and cause developmental delays.
Additionally, you will bear the opportunity cost of everything you hope to achieve from your website sooner.
Content-first design is the answer
The content-first design is an approach to design where you figure out the content first, and the design works around it.
Instead of cramming content in a predetermined website design, you plan the layout of your website as per the content.
Determining content pre-hand doesn’t mean it has to be well-written or polished. It just means that you need to have a good idea of what you are going to say and how your content should be structured all over your website.
Steps in a content-first approach
In addition to being a medium of communication, content is design in itself. The structure of your content, the choice of words, information accessibility, and navigability – all contribute to your customer’s experience.
The content-first approach considers all these aspects strategically to create the desired impact for your business.
Let’s take a look at the journey you need to take with content before moving on to the design phase.
1. Defining your business and its goals
First and foremost, you must define your business, who you aim to serve, how you do it, and what values you bring.
2. Learning about your customers and their goals
You can’t serve your customers well if you don’t know what they are looking for.
Conducting user research can help you learn about your potential customers and what they want to achieve from a business like yours. It equips you to align your business with your customer’s goals.
3. Creating the user flow
The definition of your business and learnings about your potential customers should help you visualize the journeys visitors can take with your business.
User flow is the series of steps a visitor will take to achieve their goal.
In a nutshell, creating user flows helps you determine the must-have content and its location to guide your potential customer around your website.
4. Outlining the site architecture
Once you have created the user flow, you will have solid data points to outline the map of your site, which further helps you visualize content requirements.
Site architecture is the plan of your website that includes a list of the pages, the hierarchy of the information on each page, and the relationship between different pages.
The architecture of your site can help you decide the priority of each content piece.
5. Defining the content layout
Now that you broadly know your website’s structure, you can figure out the pages’ overall layout, including the sections nested within it.
All the above steps help you determine the types of content you’ll need and where it should be located to guide your audience most efficiently.
The content layout attempts to visualize the elements to effectively present the content, such as grouping different content components (headline, image, or byline), hierarchy, and flow on the page. Moreover, it can help you better display the content across devices.
6. Creating a proto-copy
Dummy texts are misleading. So, there’s enormous merit in crafting the actual texts in advance. However, it doesn’t have to be flawless.
A proto-copy is a real, but not necessarily finished, copy. The proto-copy should be close to the message you wish to convey and the number of words it would take. It should also reflect the voice and tone of your brand.
As you move along the design, you can keep refining the words and adding finesse without changing the defined layout.
In essence, the content-first approach benefits your entire business
You cannot undermine the importance of visual design for a website. But, a content-first strategy helps you strike the right balance between the design and content.
Going content-first benefits your business far beyond developing a perfect website. A content-first approach helps you:
- Increase the efficiency of the project by uncovering the opportunities and potential challenges around design and content much earlier.
- Save costs and time for redoing the design or the content.
- Enhance your audience’s experience by providing the right amount of information at the right place and time.
- Build a consistent and impactful brand story.
- Construct flexible and futuristic content systems to scale your business through your website.
Need help taking a content-first approach for your website? Let’s collaborate to craft all-encompassing, high-performing content that will elevate your business.
