Think about the order of activities that’s needed to create a powerful website. You’d probably design your pages first, and then populate them with content afterwards, wouldn’t you?
Most businesses would. However, experienced designers would look at things the other way around. Web designers work backwards, considering content at the very beginning of a design project.
Why?
Because otherwise it’s a bit like hiring a van to help a friend move house before you know how much stuff they’ve got. You end up trying to fit everything into a predefined space, even if that space isn’t quite right. The better option, of course, is to find out what you’re working with first, and then book a van that’s the right size. It’s exactly the same when it comes to web design and web content.
Know what you want to say first. Then build pages that allow you to communicate your message.
What’s your message?
So… what do you want to say? What information do you want to share?
The easiest way to get started is to jot down all the most important points that you want to get across on your website. This will depend on what purpose you want your site to achieve.
Eventually, as your list grows, you’ll start to see patterns emerging. You should start to see that bits of information are linked together; that they work together well to form a complete picture.
Once you have these groupings, you can summarise their individual messages and build pages that allow you to communicate them in a natural way that makes sense. You might find that you need…
- An ‘About’ page to tell your brand story
- A team page to share information about your expertise and experience
- A products page outlining the different services you offer your clients
- An industries page, highlighting your particular specialities and strengths
- An FAQ page to answer common questions
Ultimately, knowing what you want to say is key to building a site that really works for you.
Communicating with confidence
One of the most important things to remember is that it’s not just what you say, but how you say it.
Translating your message into audience-facing content can be tricky. Especially as you’ll need to consider SEO, too, if you want to ensure your target audience can find your website easily.
Great web copy is content that speaks to your visitors in a tone of voice that they can easily recognise as coming from your brand. It also helps guide them towards whatever outcome you want to achieve. Great copy also walks the fine line between being written for people, and being picked up by algorithms. It’s got to make sense to your audience. But it’s also got to inform search engines of what your site is about, enabling them to match this content to relevant user search terms for maximum visibility.
And above all else, your content has got to play a positive role in edging your customers towards an action. There’s no point building a site if your visitors are going to look at it once and then disappear. Every piece of content should bring value, with a strong call to action (CTA) that informs the visitor of the next steps they need to take. All delivered in the tone of voice associated with your brand.
Preparing the ground for the experts
Don’t worry if you don’t have it all figured out just yet. If you establish your message and figure out what sort of pages you need to get this message across, you can move forward in your design plans by using placeholder text. This is ‘dummy’ text that’s added to your site temporarily. It can be replaced before your site goes live with professional content, created by content writing experts.
