What do you call a awesomely designed website with no content. Anything but a website.
The fact of the matter is that the most important part of any website is the content. But the thing most likely to derail a website project this side of money is no content.
A web designer might be able to create a nice-looking design and a developer create that site with dummy content, but it definitely cannot launch without any content about your business.
So here’s how to make sure you don’t get caught in the content dilemma.
Don’t forget about the content
When you’re planning and laying out a new website, it is very easy to overlook all of the content that’s going to be needed for it. After all, you’re probably thinking about that cool design or fancy animation (spoiler alert: you don’t really need fancy animations on your site).
But that is really all secondary to the content. In fact, I’ll argue that the content comes first. You need to think about the text on your website at all times. This is what your potential customers or clients are going to be looking for. Yes, it helps if it’s presented in a nice manner, but the substance of your text has to be there.
I’d argue that this needs to be a central part of your planning stage. You should be thinking and planning through the text before you even contact a developer. You probably don’t need the exact content while you’re still planning, but you need to be thinking about it.
Let’s Tell Your Story
Every person and business has a story. Why did you start the business? How have you helped customers succeed? What have you done in the community? You have a lot of options for how to tell the stories of your business from copywriting to other text stories to photos and videos. Let’s find the best way to create content for your website to tell your business’ story.
Let’s Create Content for Your BusinessDiscuss it during discovery
Once you’ve found a developer and are in that discovery stage, make sure you bring it up. Actually, if your developer brings it up before you do, you’ve found a good one.
You need to discuss this with your developer before any actual work starts on the website. It’s a massive plus for a designer to be able to design with the exact content that you’ll have on your site. And developers really like to develop the site with the correct text.
This way, the content stays on the top of everyone’s mind during the project. Everyone knows what it is and how it fits with the website. After all, it is the most important part of the website.
Make sure everyone knows where the content is coming from and is on time
And finally, before you leave the discovery and planning stages, make sure you and the developer know and agree to where the content is coming from and when it should be in the hands of the developer. This is going to save you from so many problems down the road.
Most developers don’t really care where it’s coming from — whether it’s something you wrote or if you bring in a copywriter for it. I know for me, as someone who is also a writer, I offer copywriting services, though that obviously adds to the price of the project.
But where the content is coming from is not quite as important as everyone knowing where it’s coming from and that it will be delivered by an agreed-upon date. There is nothing more frustrating as a developer than having to sit on a project and wait until it’s delivered. But planning that out and getting it in on time makes everything run so smooth.
So when you’re planning out your website, make sure you don’t forget about the content. It’s just as important, if not more important, to the website as the design.
And if you don’t think about it before the designing stage begins, it’s going to be a massive pain later on.
