Thoughest thing about being a web developer.

Have you ever looked at fonts. Like really looked at them? Have you ever tried to determine how happy or sad a font is? How active or passive?

What about colors? Do you think that blue or green is more calming? Are shades better than tints?

Layouts are challenging too. There are all of these rules about composition but how can we apply these rules to website design considering they way in which our websites are being accessed at so many screen sizes? How can layout be functional, beautiful, and also responsive?

These questions are really tough.

Reasons Why Content Is Difficult

If you’ve not had a website before or even if you have, preparing and editing content can be a much bigger, much more complicated task than you anticipated. Some reasons why content is more may be difficult than you think:

It’s difficult to get clarity around what you’re doing in your practice.

Writing your website’s content is difficult even if you know who you serve and how but without knowing these essentials, the challenge is increased exponentially. Knowing your audience and having the ability to reach them empathetically is so important as a guide for writing your website content.

Estimating the amount of content you need is tough.

A website isn’t just an about page and home page and services page. There are so many bits and pieces of content to take into consideration. Here are some pages and types of content that you might have forgotten about:

• FAQ page
• Contact page
• CTAs for every page
• CTAs after every blog post
• Copy for your newsletter optin forms
• Blog posts
• Privacy Policy, legal disclaimer, terms of services pages
• And there may be more, depending on your specific website

Perfection is unattainable, but that doesn’t mean it feels ok to put content out there that is just “ok” or “good”

Many times we may already have some content written but it may not be as polished as we want it to be. Rather than move forward with content that doesn’t “feel perfect yet”, we agonize over the details, sleep on it for one more night, and then another. And then work on it. And then get frustrated. And then work some more. This type of?content perfectionism can be overcome.

Content is abundant, too abundant.

If you have too much content, it’s hard to get it organized. You get attached to the way it is, because you invested a lot of time into writing it and then you feel like you don’t want to edit things down (although you know that no one is going to read a 5000 word home page).

Organizing content is hard.

Sometimes it’s not only an issue of writing content but also an issue of organizing content. It may become a difficult thing to strategize. Some examples of questions that come up are:

• Should I put resources and worksheets onto a separate page or should they be included in blog posts?
• Should I use pdfs or include content on-page or in a website form?
• What should I do with videos? Where should they go? Should I write a post to go with each video?
• What questions should I put on an?FAQ page? And which ones on a services page?
• What about the 7 day challenge I’m doing in March? Does that need it’s own page?
• What about my events and workshops? Do I need one page per workshop or an archive of all of them on one page?
• And more, so many more! (Especially if you have varied types of content for content marketing and?being generous and helpful and awesome)

Web designers don’t write content.

Design is not writing, it’s design. Design is not organizing your website content, it’s design. Design is not editing your content, it’s design.

Web designers design websites.

It can come as a surprise that website design does not automatically include content services and sometimes website design clients have not planned for the time needed to prepare content or have it prepared for them. If you need help with your website content, you ought to hire a copywriter as this is a separate area of specialization. Some web designers will also include content services or copywriting if they are qualified to do so but a design package alone will typically not include services outside of design.

How Content Fits Into Design Projects

A custom website design is specially made for you. Asking a website designer to design a website without content is like asking a tailor to sew suit without having measurements. A custom suit has to fit the body of the client just like the website has to suit the strategy and content of the web design client.

Another myth that must be busted then is the myth that a website is just a pretty container. A website, a custom website, is a lot more than that.

In order for a design project to start, the content needs to be in the designer’s hands along with any other information that may inform the direction of the design. For me, as a designer, I work off of content, conversion strategy, and the empathy and compassion I have for your ideal client.

However, every designer is a bit different when it comes to these additional items they need in order to design. The one item that is in common with every single web designer I know is to have content before designing.

For the best design results, content needs to be delivered to your designer before they start designing.