Content design examples that will inspire you

The seed of this post can be traced back to the time I once drove 45 miles to pick up a John Lewis tweed sofa snapped up on eBay, but couldn't fit the thing into the van I had hired. It's a sinking feeling, looking at a piece of furniture hanging out of the back of your vehicle, knowing in your heart of hearts that no matter how hard you try to cram it in, it isn't coming home with you. So close yet so far.

But what does that sorry fail have to do with 'content design'? Well, firstly, a little on what it actually is. 'Content design' is a phrase that has cropped up within the past couple of years and is used to describe the vehicle employed to present your information to your audience.

Thinking beyond a web article, table or image, content design is really all about telling people what they need to know, or giving them what they are looking for, in the simplest, most user-friendly way possible - maybe thinking beyond the traditional and applying a sprinkling of innovative thinking.

Pushing excellent content design should not only improve user experience (and of course boost NPS, fingers crossed), it should also bring business benefits like a reduction in call and email volumes into customer services teams because people can self-serve with ease.

Sarah Richards, who worked as Head of Content Design for the Government Digital Service (GDS), revealed in a blog on gov.uk that research had shown people only read about 20% to 28% of a web page - meaning that information needs to be passed from screen to user as quickly as possible.

With that in mind, we can start to think about content design as not only producing content that is nice to use, but also streamlines the knowledge transfer process.

1) And it's gov.uk that provides my first example of excellent content design. One of the leading organisations when it comes to content design, its Licence Finder can be used to work out which type of licence someone might need to apply for depending on what they want to do.

A user selects their activity or business, then what they would like to specifically do, and in which UK country, from drop-down menus. The results are presented, with links to in-depth information relevant to the user.

A fantastic example because although 99% of the content will be of absolutely no interest, the other 1% is exactly what someone is searching for. Getting them their safely is key.

2) A second example of impressive content design is from Hertz (and this is where my early story will start to make sense). Hertz's van calculator looks beyond providing a 'flat' article and goes for a tool that lets someone moving home or looking to shift an eBay purchase work out which size of vehicle they need to transport their things. I stumbled across it while looking for a suitable van second-time around, having learned the hard way of course.

3) My final example is from purina.co.uk. Its 'Dog breed selector' can help people discover their perfect pooch - all the user needs to do is make decisions around things like how often they can groom the pet and take it out for a walk, along with info about themselves. Recommended companions are presented back and up to five can be compared.

A superb piece of work that can save users hours of time they would have spent researching online.