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content driven web design

Why The Design of Your New Website Must Be Driven by Content

Time for new website. But are you ready for all the activities that decision brings? The truth is, developing your website is a time-consuming and sometimes complex activity, even if you are drafting in professional developers to do the job for you. There are still constant decisions that need to be made about the style of your site and what you want it to achieve. It is very important to Design a website wisely. A proper content driven web design can make your ideas and hard work successful. D5 Creation Themes are designed considering all these purposes.

Underpinning the development process of a new, or updated, website, is the question of style. Do you want your website to reflect your views about your business product or service, or do you want to build your site around what your customers’ needs and demands are? The latter is undoubtedly the approach to follow, and this is what is called content-driven web design, focusing on the content that you know your customers need and want.

Content-driven web design

The first question that you should ask yourself is, ‘what is content-drive web design exactly?’ The answer to that question will become the principle upon which the whole development process of your site will be based.

Content-driven design, in essence, is the fundamental use of messages through words that are the core to what your customers want and are looking for in their search. It’s all well and good having beautify pictures and color schemes, but if the words that the user sees do not immediately hit the spot, then your site will begin to suffer a negative bounce rate.

Content-driven web design is the art of using words – key words – in strategically-placed positions around which everything else is centered. The idea is that the content – the written content – is the core theme, and everything else exists to support that message.

Why should we use a content-driven web design approach?

The next question, of course, is ‘why?’ Why should you base the development of your website around this one key concept?

The guiding principle here is something called content hierarchy. Just as it sounds, this involves selecting content on the priority that it is given to users and customers – what do they want to see first?

Keep asking yourself ‘what is it that my users want to see?’ Put yourself in their shoes and think about what catches their eye as soon as they move onto your landing page. We all understand that this is an age of next to no patience, so if users do not immediately see the content that confirms they are in the right place, then they will move on, and you have lost a potential conversion. The modern marketplace is simply too competitive to waste that chance.

Once again, avoid prioritizing what you think looks nice – a great picture of your premises may make you feel warm and fuzzy, but that has next to no relevance for a potential user. If you are a provider of mountain bikes, for example, a picture of a mountain bike may well be more relevant, but the key words here would be ‘looking for a new mountain bike?’, or words to that extent. This is the core principle of content-driven web design.

Think about what you would be immediately looking for as a user entering your landing page. Do you give them the information you would need as a priority? If the answer is ‘yes’ then you are following this concept of content driving your design.

Why is content so important?

There are a number of scientifically-proven reasons why content should form the basis of everything you are trying to achieve with your website.

The first reason has already been touched upon: because the statistics and relevant research shows that this is what users are looking for. Bounce rates are highest among sites that do not use a content-driven approach. It’s mostly common sense too, of course, as it is logical that users need instant solutions to their needs. A site that offers that instant solution, through well-placed content, will win the highly-competitive battle of the page-ranking phenomenon.

The second reason is also directly related to page rankings. That’s because the likes of Google employ bots that actively seek out relevant content, and give higher priority to those sites that display it. To get higher up those all-important rankings list, you need content that propels you there.

Next is the concept of efficiency in what you are trying to achieve with your website. When initially brainstorming all of the ideas you wish to communicate on your website, you will likely end up with an incredibly long list. When you start to review these options through the prism of user needs, however, you will soon discover that most of what you are dealing in is low-priority at the best and irrelevant at worst. But this is good because for every page that doesn’t have to be made, development costs are reduced. This is in fact an efficient, quick and cost-effective way to build your site.

The basic method

So now you know what you want to do, the next question is, ‘how do I do it?’ This really isn’t as complicated as you might think, and starts off with a principle called site structure, which is really just the overview of pages on your site and how everything links together. So, starting with your landing page, how many sub-pages do you need?

From here move on to your page structure, which means what content is going to go where. Which content is going to share a page, and is this a logical means of displaying the information? That’s the principle.

Finally, you move on to the content yourself, which although may be the last thing that is actually written in some cases, was all along the reason why you have decided to structure your site exactly like this? Plus remember to keep these key ideas in mind at all times:

  • What does the customer want? Always place yourself in the position of the customer, and consider their needs first.
  • Is the content relevant? Review all content and consider how important and relevant it really is. Low-priority content should not be at the top of your landing page, for example.
  • Do supplementary images, videos etc. support my content, or distract from it? The key word here is ‘supplementary’. Although it is important for your site to look nice, these issues are always secondary to the principle concept of content.
  • Do we use clear CTAs? Call To Actions are a vital part of a content-driven website development approach because once the user understands that you offer to the solution to their need, then the next step is what must they do in order to get there. Don’t cripple them with options or force them to navigate around your site in order to understand how to get there – show them. Point them immediately to the place where they need to go to get the solution. Make this integral to your design.

Sum up on content driven web design

So that completes a review of what content-driven web design looks like. Develop your site with these principles in mind, and you are a long way down the road to delivering a site which puts users first. That is a great competitive advantage.

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Author : Katrina Hatchett

Katrina Hatchett is a tech blogger at PhDKingdom with a particular interest in the arts of problem-solving and communication. She is also a regular writing contributor and blogger

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