What Comes First, Web Design or Content?

It’s the classic website conundrum – or at least, it is for most people. As experienced web designers, it’s obvious what we must think. Design is the most important starting point for a new website.

Isn’t it?

Read on, and you might be surprised!

People will visit your website for the content first. If the design is clear and engaging, they’ll stay.

Think about how most people will find your website. While some might come from direct recommendations or social media posts, many will start with an online search for your products or services. The words they use will be taken from your website’s content – such as copy and blog posts – rather than its design features.

(Have you ever heard of anyone typing “compelling images” or “wow-factor graphics” in their Google search for a local accountant?)

That’s one reason why we’ll ask you to send us the content for your website before we start creating its visual structure.

Here’s another.

When we know what you want to say, we can design a website that helps you say it visually.

For us, good design is all about context. Yes, we can take your brand colours and create a showstopping home page for your website, complete with interactive elements and distinctive typography.

But if we don’t know what message you want to convey, our design efforts – and your budget! – will likely go to waste.

If we do know, we can design your website in a way that:

• Prioritises and organises the right content, in the right places.
• Makes your copy easy to scan and read.
• Helps users clearly see what you want them to do (for example, sign up to your newsletter or find out more about a particular product or service).
• Evokes the right emotional response to your content.

So, does your web content need to be polished and finalised before we start designing?

Absolutely not!

We pride ourselves on working in friendly collaboration with our clients. So it’s not a question of: you deliver the final content, we get on with the design, and that’s that.

Although we’re designers rather than context experts, we’ve created a lot of websites over the years. This experience helps us act as a useful sounding board for common copy and blog-related questions, like “Is my home page copy too long?” or “How many blog posts do I need?”

As well as offering guidance where we are able to, we can also recommend the trusted copywriters we work with. They will happily take over your content work, if you’d rather get on with what you do best!

Do you need a new company website?

You don’t need to know everything you want it to say just yet. You don’t even have to know what your site should look like.

Our creative, one-stop-shop website design process will help you dive deeper into the key questions – because we’ll ask them all – as we learn more about who you are and what you do.

That’s how we’ll create a website that’s completely on-brand… and that you can’t wait to show off!

Get in touch with us to see what we can do for your website.