A good website should boost both user engagement as well as experience. And it takes high-quality content blended with superb web design to attract and retain site visitors. In other words, website owners need to have a good content strategy and a slick web design to survive in this digital age.
It’s essential to develop your brand’s image around the value delivered through your content on a user-friendly site.
CONTENT STRATEGY vs. WEB DESIGN
Content strategy is more than merely coming up with content. It involves planning, creating, delivering, marketing, and management of content. Businesses and companies with blogs no longer rely on content creation to thrive online; they must also consider content distribution and delivery. Content strategy requires dedication and skills to manage content correctly, which is why large organizations hire content strategists to handle their web content.
Web design, on the other hand, focuses primarily on developing websites. Web design covers all areas of a site – appearance, layout, graphics design, content production, and lots more. Depending on the purpose of a website, web designers can come up with a myriad of designs for your brand. However, it’s always a good idea to keep things simple and straightforward, eliminating functions that may confuse users.
Integrating Content Strategy with Web Design
The content or web design, which comes first? Designers insist that they cannot create a plan until they see the content. Meanwhile, content strategists want to know the website design first before crafting content.
So, how can both content and web design processes integrate seemingly?
Building excellent web design requires understanding the sort of content you will publish on it. In essence, proper content development and management strategies must be in place to guide the web designer. Unfortunately, most people find an existing website design and then struggle to create content that will fit the web design.
Taking this route is less effective than developing a content plan before plunging into the web design process. Remember that content is king, meaning that the value your site offers should be a priority. This doesn’t mean neglecting the appearance and sophistication of your website. It merely means that you need to have a base content strategy before designing your site.
Creating and planning an effective content strategy requires doing your due diligence. It means asking the right questions and establishing a plan. In a nutshell, effective content strategy means researching what works, depending on your business goals.
How to Develop an Effective Content Strategy?
Without a content strategy, you are gambling with the success or failure of your site. There are critical aspects of content strategy to consider before you begin content production.
● The Reason for Creating Content?
This is probably the first thing to consider when starting out with a content strategy. It’s essential to know the reason behind your content, and this is usually tied to your overall business objectives. To stay on track and not give up along the way, make sure that you have a clear business goal. Knowing this will help you provide more value to your site visitors.
● Determine your Audience
This is to determine who you aim to reach with the content produced. Here, you’re looking to reach a particular demographic – gender, age, social status, location, and so on. You can also research current trends to understand the dominant audience in your industry.
● Set Goals and List Steps
Now it’s time to define the end goal for all content produced. It’s important to set realistic goals, as accomplishing that goal encourages you to keep going. After setting your goals, you can then list out significant steps and milestones to reach that goal.
● Conduct a Test Run
Before conducting a test run, you should create your first content prototype. This prototype can then be shown to your first audience to analyze the response rate and reaction. Keep in mind that your audience could be your staff who already understand the company’s objectives.
Use this opportunity to receive feedback from your audience on the tone and style of content. Find out if the content is engaging enough, or if the website is visually-appealing and compatible with the brand’s image? Always ensure that the web designer gets feedback and criticism related to the site.
● Ready to Publish
After fine-tuning your content based on the critics and feedback, it’s time to start publishing your work. With publishing and distribution of content, consistency is key. Essentially, this means that you should have a ton of work already created to publish consistently.
Make sure that your content satisfies the aforementioned guidelines according to your content strategy.
● Content Distribution Strategy
The purpose of spending hours creating content is so that it can bring value to those who need it. Every content created is aimed at reaching the end-user. This means that your marketing strategy should be pretty useful in reaching the right audience.
With so much information online, you want users to find your content first. To get your content out there, you need to take content distribution seriously. This means taking advantage of marketing tools, including emails, organic searches, and social media platforms.
Developing a clear strategy is not the end of it; you still need to continue. The next thing is to discuss the content strategy with the web designer. This will help him/her understand the wireframe and the details of each web page. It also gives the web designer an early headway in integrating the fonts, color, and layout.
HOW CONTENT STRATEGY AND WEB DESIGN WORKS HAND-IN-HAND
The aim of creating content is to drive customers to the website, meaning that your content must have value. A valuable content must engage, be easy to read and address a specific topic. However, displaying great content on a poorly designed website will only decrease how well users enjoy visiting your site. Site visitors will also dwindle if you neglect your content quality and have a sophisticated website.
Most online businesses do not pay much attention to the content they are putting out. They don’t create engaging content, post consistently, or revolve their topics around a particular genre. And in turn, this causes a decline in site visitors as well as SEO rankings.
Companies are now hiring freelancers to create their content without the need for a content strategist. While this works out well for smaller companies, having an in-house content manager or strategist helps in organizing and properly distributing content for larger online businesses. An in-house strategist also works hand-in-hand with freelancers to produce content that aligns with the company’s goals.
Having a concrete content plan and strategy allows the web designer to come up with the right design. The content-type guides the web designer during the creative process to bring everything together. Integrating content strategy in web design makes the process of publishing content and delivering value so much easier. Remember that high-quality publishing content consistently gives a great user experience.
