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Your Web Site:
The Importance of
Content Before Design
By Luke Petterson, Interactive Director |
You've decided to have your web site professionally designed and developed. Good decision! Now what?
You might already be thinking about the look of your web site or thinking about some cool bells-and-whistles that would be fun to have on your web site. Stop now.
First things first - you need to determine what content will be on your web site and how you want to organize it.
Designing a web site before you know what content you will be putting on the web site is like putting the cart before the horse, and you all know how that will work out.
A web site with fancy graphics (for the sake of fancy graphics) with content crammed into the site in an unplanned fashion is not going to appeal to many visitors. People will be visiting your web site because they want to learn something about your business or services. Start your web site project by planning out the information structure of your site and the design will fall into place afterward.
Why is it so important to focus on content and information structure before design and development of a web site? Because the content is the backbone and lifeblood of your web site.
Starting out a web project by gathering and organizing content first will provide the following benefits:
- Your designer/developer will know exactly what the scope of the site is and what message you are trying to convey, which will make the design process more smooth
- Your designer/developer will have clear direction when mapping out the pages of the site and will be able to create better relationships between the pages and content throughout the site if they have the content sitting in front of them beforehand
- You'll save money on design/development because your project will have a clear direction. In other words, you won't be throwing content at the designers/developers late into the project and saying "We need to fit this in there somewhere". You won't need any revisions to site layouts and content, which can easily cause a project to go over the initial budget.
"Sounds great," you might say. "So how do I go about organizing the content and information on my web site before I hand it over to a designer?"
Easy.
Follow these steps below before you talk to a web designer and you'll experience a smooth web site development process.
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Merry Marketing Blunders
By Jason Jacobson
It’s been a week. I can finally start the healing process after two months of Christmas advertising creative cop-outs. I like Christmas, so don’t get ahead of yourself thinking this is some rant by a bitter 20-something because he didn’t get what he wanted. It’s quite the opposite. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown increasingly fond of what this holiday is all about—good food and good family. Socks, underwear, prime rib, twice-baked potatoes and I couldn’t have been happier.
» Read more & Comment on this article on our Blog »
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