Content drives design... right?

I’d love to believe that this rant would draw a great, resounding ”Duh!” from the entire website design/build community… but then I’d have to have myself committed for delusional behavior. The evidence is overwhelmingly otherwise. Content may be king, but bassackward site building still rules.

Despite all the learnings of the past ten years, content-led site design is still far from the norm. The big sites are starting to get it, and sites like Amazon work on it daily; but, among small to mid-size b2b sites, content development too often amounts to "Here's yer template. Fill 'er up!"

Most of the mistakes that will subsequently cripple the site's performance have now already been made.

Ideally, before design of the graphic template begins, research and information gathering should be complete, and 60-75% of the content should be in first draft form. But "ideal" seldom happens. Reality intrudes. It’s seldom practical to be that far ahead with content development. So, before the designers are turned loose, what level of pre-design info-gathering and content development constitutes “best practice”?

1. Research and information gathering completed
2. Site architecture and infrastructure fully mapped
3. SEO strategy and conversion strategy in place
4. Home and top-level pages written and signed off by client
5. Content example written for each different page template (e.g. Home, main page, sub page, on-line form)

Why front-load the effort? After all, the designer usually needs only a creative brief and Items 2, 4 & 5.

It’s about minimizing the revisions and additions after design is begun—and design/building a frame to fit the contents, not the reverse.

It's about designing to support SEO and conversion strategies, and building for enhanced user experience.

And, not least, it’s about nailing down the site map. I’ve yet to work on a site where the content development process hasn’t altered the initial mapping assumptions. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to change a map than to repeatedly revise a design.

Point being… if design kicks off without front-end content development, the tail’s wagging the dog. Design’s primary role is to present and enhance the content and conversion strategy. That’s no impediment to branding or any other contribution of design—but getting it backwards will work against a cohesive, strategy-driven, best practices site build.