One thing I’ve never really understood is why website designers build websites before they have received all of the content from the client? I think the process for this is wrong and ultimately hurts both the client and the designer.
Content, they say is king – and it really is, yet these days it does not seem to be the most important thing we consider when we approach a website design. Both designers and clients often get hung up on all sorts of other details such as accessibility, user experiences, graphic design or html & css validation – and whilst ignoring these sorts of things can detract from the success of a website I think we need to start putting a bigger emphasis on generating content.
I’ve worked on a broad range of different web projects as both a developer and designer, and in the overwhelming majority of cases I’ve had to build the website with little or no content. The most common reason for this is that the client just isn’t ready to provide that content yet, and often promises to work on it whilst we develop the design and CMS. However, I think that working together in this way can limit how good the end result will be, because the designers are going to have to create a design based upon the content that they have asked for rather than the content they actually receive.
And in case you missed it that is the reason for me writing this article because it forces the designer to generalize their design.
The thing is that designers rarely create completely original designs, as with any other art form, they rely heavily on their influences and are often employed because of their ability to be influenced by others. When I create websites for myself I usually have nearly all of the copy and images compiled before I begin the design. This influences the way I choose colors and fonts that work really well with my content. Working in this way could actually reduce the cost of the project because it provides an initial starting point for the designer, and getting the initial inspiration for a design can be time consuming.
So as of now I’m going to start steering my future clients towards fully completing the information architecture and content stage of the project, providing me with a really good selection of complete articles and pages that are ready for publication. As well as (hopefully) encouraging a better website design from me, some clients will discover early on in the process that they actually find it quite difficult to produce the content and I can then help them to develop a really good content generation process.