Why the content & design of your website go hand in hand

When designing a new website for your business, most people think that getting the design finalised before the content is the right way to do things.

It makes sense for the most part—after all, how could you possibly begin to think about the text and images without having a layout to guide your choices?

The answer is you can’t. But here’s the catch: if you fail to take into account the actual content during the designing stage, you might find that the design you end up with isn’t able to effectively serve your needs and those of your customers.

The problem with disregarding content when designing your website

Take a look at these examples:

1. You’ve designed an amazing landing page that’s ready to be populated with similarly amazing images. Once you start uploading your pictures, you realise that the way they’re cropped makes their contents appear skewed or missing from the picture entirely. Taking new photos is an expensive option that you’re not willing to pay for and adjusting your design to accommodate means your beautiful layout is, well, no longer beautiful.

2. Your navigation menus are primed and all that’s left to do is to map out the links. However, upon doing this you notice that some of your page titles are too long. You can’t condense them without altering their meaning and you can’t adjust your menu as it will throw off the entire look of your website.

These are just two examples of what might happen if you forget to consider the content when you design your website. There are many more possible scenarios, and they could prove to be even more problematic.

The solution? Consider the content in the early stages of the process

So, what’s the right way to go about it? The best way to go about the website design process is to already have an idea of what your content will be. This will better inform your design choices.

Don’t think of your content as the final stage of the website-building process. Instead, use all the different elements (text, images, calls to action, etc.) as a basis to come up with a design that will work for you not just now, but also in the long run.

Test out your design and see whether or not it works with the content you plan to publish. Make the necessary tweaks to get it right and then come up with a content format you can stick to so that everything remains as it should.

This way, you minimise the time needed to make adjustments, paving the way for a faster turnout and potentially opening up more opportunities for business. You also get to reap other amazing benefits such as:

1. You’ll have already made content that you can use in the final design which avoids you having to rush your content and the optimisation that will come with it.

2. You’ll have provided your website designers with a more concrete idea of what your needs are, giving them the information they need to do their jobs more effectively.

These benefits are definitely hard to ignore. In fact, you’d be really shooting yourself in the foot if you did.

Conclusion

When designing your website, it’s absolutely crucial that your content planning goes hand-in-hand with the process. Doing so makes better use of precious time and resources and you’ll end up with better results than you would have otherwise.

We are a web design agency with offices in Hertfordshire and Milton Keynes. If you need a team of professionals to design you a fantastic website that suits your content perfectly, get in touch with us today!