Month: August 2012

So you have a brand spanking new website and it is empty and ready for you to populate it with content, what do you do now? What is your website content strategy?

The first thing you should to is fire your web design company! It’s true, if your web design company has designed you a beautiful new website without knowing what the website content strategy is then you have problems. Ever heard the phrase “a Silverback doesn’t fit into cat carrier”? That applies to your website.

A web designer needs to know what the web content strategy is BEFORE  they think about designing that content. Makes sense right… Another phrase to drive it home, “don’t put the cart before the horse.”

There are so many design agencies out there  and they are clamoring for your business, all trying to undercut their competition on price, all offering quick deliverables. You have to ask yourself if you want a web design company that creates bespoke solutions to your needs or you want an answer off of a shelf.

At our Boston web design company we love clients that want a custom solution, that want us to understand who they are as a company, and understand that it takes time, effort, and skill to create a great web presence.

We believe in a mobile first web design approach, this enables us to focus on ensuring that the content is important, no room for fluff – all goodness! The added benefit of this approach is that it helps with your website content strategy, there simply isn’t a gap to throw in “extra” stuff.

Content on your website should either meet a business goal or a user objective. I want to say that again but this time big and bold, ready…

YOUR WEBSITE CONTENT SHOULD MEET A BUSINESS GOAL OR A USER OBJECTIVE

If you have content ideas that don’t meet either of those goals then what does it do? Other than take time, energy, and focus away from generating content that does meet your business and user goals. Use your precious time wisely and keep the focus on what really matters.

Less fluff means that it is easier to manage your content and it is easier for your user to find content that is useful for them (yay, that’s a user objective checked off the list right there!)

 How to create a website content strategy

1. Have somebody in charge, not everyone – a single person
2. Know what your business goals are
3. Know what your user objectives are
4. Make it an unwavering rule that content has to meet a business goal or user objective
5. Create a spreadsheet detailing the who, what, when, why, and how of each piece of content (example: Jill needs to create a list of our current services with descriptions in the next 10 days for our services.html page so visitors know what services we can offer them)

Note: If somebody says “hey, can you put this content on our site?”, then ask them “why?” You are not being rude, it is a valid question and you can then ensure it meets the criteria for your web content strategy. This means an answer of “because it looks cool” or “it’s a great image” doesn’t cut it.

Taking control and having focused web content really isn’t that difficult once you set the ground rules. Use the checklist above against your current website to see how your current content stacks up and remember if you are starting a new web project make sure your web design company knows the correct flow: goals > content > design.