A beautifully designed website with engaging, informative content can do wonders for your business. However, it’s crucial that you ensure said engaging, informative content works well with your design. As Jeff Zeldman said, “Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”
This applies to many different industries, not just web design. You need a script before you can film a movie. You need blueprints before you can build a structure. You need to understand the purpose of your structure, the story that you’re trying to convey, before you can do so effectively.
Focusing on web design instead of content can be very tempting. You want your site to look good, after all. Plus, trying to get information about content from clients can be like pulling teeth. However, in order to have a site that retains potential customers and boosts your business, you need content that fits with it and works well.
Save Time, Money, And Frustration
If you focus on designing a site before you have content, you could end up with a design that does not work with the finished content – at all. This can lead to either the web designer or the content writer having to redo their work in order to make it fit with what the other has done.
When web designers and content writers work together throughout the process, you can save a lot of time, money, and frustration. Through open communication and understanding what the client wants, content writers and web designers can ensure that what they come up with works well together – without needing to completely redo their content or design in order to achieve this.
The Dangers Of Lorem Ipsum
When designing a site, Lorem Ipsum is very useful to fill in the spaces where content should be. It can give clients a better idea of what their website will look like when everything is complete. All that a web designer needs to do when the content is finished is to replace the Lorem Ipsum with the approved content – easy peasy.
However, it’s important to be aware of the limitations of Lorem Ipsum. Lorem Ipsum is like gas – it expands to perfectly fill the designated space. Real content doesn’t work like that. While the Lorem Ipsum title may be an ideal 20 characters, the actual title that the content writer comes up with likely won’t be that length.
If the design doesn’t account for this variability, when the actual content gets put in, it may not fit or it may look very off. For instance, if the space that the Lorem Ipsum occupies only accounts for about 200 words and the actual content is 400 words, it’s going to look very crammed. Then, either you or the content writer is going to need to make some edits in order to help the site look good again. Bear in mind that if your goal is SEO, the content the content writer gives you will likely need to be at least 600 words, if not more.
Lorem Ipsum can also give the impression that the client’s site is much further along than it actually is. While this is a very useful tool, for many different reasons, it’s crucial to remember that it doesn’t give an entirely accurate idea of what the completed content will be like.
As such, the web designer and the content writer will need to work closely together. The content writer will need to understand the layout that the web designer has in mind and the web designer will need to have an idea of what the content will look like. The client will also need to understand that Lorem Ipsum is just a placeholder, and that when the content is completed, their site may look a bit different.
Retain Site Traffic
If your content doesn’t fit with your web design, you may notice a much higher bounce rate than you’d experience otherwise. Sure, a site with a beautiful design is nice to look at… But as mentioned in the quote at the beginning of this article, if there’s no content, there’s not much keeping potential customers on your site.
Alternatively, if your content doesn’t work with your site’s design, potential customers likely won’t stick around. There are thousands upon thousands of other websites out there. If your site doesn’t look good and have informative content, your potential customers will just go to another site for whatever services or information they need.
As you can see, it’s crucial that you ensure that your content and your website’s design work well together.
Performance Driven Marketing provides professional web design and content writing services. Our team works closely together in order to ensure that your completed site looks good and reflects the story that you’re trying to convey with informative content. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation!
