When planning a new website for your business or brand, you want to make sure everything complements each other. After all, this is the entire customer journey and it can bring you valuable conversions. Web content and web design are two most important elements which play an important role to get attention from the users.
But where do you start from?
Basically, web content is all about relevance and delivery of messages regarding the brand, products, services, purpose, USP, and everything that makes the foundation of the business.
And in this way, a web design becomes totally different. It is the important phase in web development that allows the prospects to stick around and indulge in the perceived environment. With the website design, you provide the users with the best user experience and make it the platform where the users can easily look forward to.
There are two ways to solve this problem; you can hire an agent like TKDigitals or you can do it yourself. Whatever you do, the decision will be yours.
So let’s use it once. We will explore the two methods of “design first” and “content first” to understand who is more important. (Set it once and for all)
Approach Number 1: Design First
The design-first approach is all about building trust among potential customers.
When the prospect lands on your website, the first thing it sees is not the oversized title you entered, but the color scheme, the position of the element, the flow of direction and everything in between. If you can’t find words naturally, even the best web content can’t save you.
This is one of the reasons why the “design first” approach must be adopted.
1. Serves as the guidance
The simplest way to learn about the customer’s feelings is to complete the process in person.
Feel like the customer and perform the steps to get an idea. Log into your website and try to buy the product you want. How the answer to this question will be will determine the complexity of your navigation.
An easy-to-follow sitemap can boost customer confidence and guide them exactly where they want them to be.
2. Ensures credibility
Reputation or credibility is a factor that makes customers feel relaxed when they finally decide to pay. Your web design uses this as a background showing a certain level of professionalism and authenticity. It’s like dressing for the job you want.
For example, Apple wins trust of its customers by using a duo of white space and some minimal effects. The site drives your attention from everything around the important aspects and makes you hooked to the site.
A site’s design is all about creating an advertising campaign for an upcoming product. Indeed, your product can be the most significant thing in this world. But when the surrounding people don’t know about the product, then what is the use of it?
The elements, colors, navigation, and layouts provide content, which lets the audience understand the value of the site.
3. Delivers the brand tone
Your web design will be a key element of the brand tone. The combination of colors and the shape of the elements you set should determine your perception of the brand.
It also applies to the concept of brand identity, where no matter where you see it, similar colors or textures should be associated with you.
For instance, check out the iconic Coca-Cola typography and the red and white contrast. Can you recognize the brand no matter what the place is?
Approach Number 2: Content First
A web content is something that lets your audience engage in it. The website uses the content to tell the brand story to the target audience without being limited to space.
Using the brand’s voice, you can always take the opportunity to create something happening, unique, entertaining, and attractive. No matter what the color scheme is, your web content shall still stand out to drive the customers’ attention.
With appropriate content, text can define a design that fully complies with your branding proposition.
This is why the content-first approach makes sense.
1. SEO’s job
SEO is huge and needs to be perfectly configured between design and content. The problem here is that there is hardly any focus on optimization when designing a website.
The preset content snippets allow you to solve the whole puzzle by creating a complementary environment. Allows you to consider user-oriented SEO strategies and ensures that every blog, image, video or product ranks best from the start.
2. Drives development
The definition of high quality content requires no restrictions. Once the content is positioned, designing a website around it becomes easy.
On the other hand, overly enthusiastic design sometimes requires shortening the content, so that the whole brand goal disappears from the established aesthetic concept. In addition, after determining the length of the content, there is no need to change the design elements every time, thus saving time and effort.
3. Supports responsiveness
If the website is not mobile-friendly, about 57% of users don’t recommend the website. Therefore, not creating a responsive webpage will seriously damage your chances of getting the user engagement you need.
The process of building a responsive web page requires that you adapt to your project in a limited space. The content-first approach allows you to perceive the dimensions that bring it all together. Since it’s impossible to put everything together, the content helps determine what should be kept and what shouldn’t be kept.
The Verdict
While these sound abnormal, the answer is both have different perspectives and have different significance too according to @TKDigitals.
The content and the design should start at the same time. Since the two are interdependent, the collaboration between the designer and the author of the content will produce synergy, which makes the impact huge.
The custom website design should have enough space for the content and form a natural flow of interaction for users. On the other hand, the content must conform to the upcoming trend and ultimately deliver the content that users expect.
Essentially, both the content and the design should embellish the brand’s vision, tone and voice, in order to resonate with the audience.
