How often in your day to day projects do you use Lorem Ipsum as a framework for your content in a website?
It is a very common practise to do, many of us actually do it on a daily basis, to visualise what the layout should look like. However more often than not the actual content isn’t sent until the last minute as it is still being prepared by the client, or the site users will construct the text as they go along, therefore emphasis is put first on design and then content.
But if we’re not careful with the information flow, we can easily create an unhealthy framework where particular content holders do not compliment the size of the client’s paragraphs, this furthermore creates unnecessary space and a bad structure.
Even though it may not be our job, it would be appropriate to adopt a content strategy, in order to verify from the very beginning what content will go where, and how much of it will appear in each area of our website.
This will furthermore create a much more usable and accessible user interface for the end user.
It is important to recognise here, that the data inputted contributes heavily upon visitors coming back and goes a long way towards user acceptance.
Therefore we (as web designers & architects) should be clear from the very beginning that the structure should be transparent and not over-do the design, but give the content precedence over decorative content.
One of the ways of doing this is to implement a content strategy to make sure we control structure and content at the same time:
- Who’s the target audience?
- Know exactly who you’re writing for before you get started
- What’s in it for the consumer?
- What you can do for them
- Have unique & catchy title
- Keep it consistent across the site – so there’s more likelihood of them coming back
- Short and simple can be beneficial
- Make sure the information flow is easy to comprehend
- Check/ Analyse your content – Make sure it’s complimentary to their product area.
Tags: Audience, Data Flow, Web Design
