How Website Design and Content Work Together

Nowadays, people are very aesthetically oriented which makes the website design one of the crucial points of successful business development. In addition, business owners and content marketers have been paying more attention to producing high-quality content because the competition is very high in any industry.

Considering that both website design and content are essential to the growth of your business, the question arises how to effectively combine these two?

Focusing on each of these aspects separately won’t provide you with the desired result. They need to work together for the website to be a success. Here are some guidelines that will help you to achieve that.

Good Communication as an Essential

First of all, your website designer and content creator need to be aware that they need to have open communication and keep each other posted if you want this to work.

As a part of your instructions about what kind of website you want, emphasize that their work is intertwined and that they need to keep in mind the process of the other at all times.

Before you start with the project, you should all sit together or simply get them to have a talk and discuss their ideas and plans. If they make their outline based on their vision only, they’ll have to make much more correction than if they talk it out before they start.

Throughout the whole process, the web designer and content writer need to have good communication and keep inform each other of any change they plan to make because the one will always influence the other.

Put the Focus on What’s Important

Both website design and content serve the same purpose – to cater to the needs of the users.

The website’s design needs to appeal to the target audience and the content needs to provide the information your audience wants to know.

This leads us to a conclusion that in order to create a good website design and high-quality content, your designer and writer need to know who the target audience is and adapt their work according to that piece of information.

For example, let’s say that you want to create a website for your online business which sells mobile phone equipment and add-ons. After you have researched the market and defined that your target audience is mostly young adults and adults you need to pass that information to the designer and the writer.

Then, they’ll need to have a consultation about what type of website would this audience like to see. They probably have some previous experience which will help them to get an agreement on which direction they should take. After they each do some portion of it on their own, they should get in touch again to see if they are headed in the agreed direction.

If they keep this type of flow during the whole process, you’ll end up with a great website which gives your target audience what they want and need.

Work as One

Even though you’ll have two people who specialize in their own field of work, they still need to work as one.

What does this mean?

It means that the designer should create the website with the content in mind and the writer should create the copy with the websites look in mind. After they agree on the general idea, they will know what the other has planned for their portion of the work.

If they decided what each of them needs to do, that still doesn’t mean that they should completely forget about the other aspects of the website creation.

Let’s say that you are the website designer in this story. The writer explained what type of content they want you to incorporate and you should create the layout around this idea. The same applies to the writer. If you are a writer, you need to create the content for the type of website the designer plans to make.

This is the key for the content to be naturally embedded in the website.

Define the Aspects of the Content

Designers and content writers need to work together but without telling the other how to do their own specialism.

Outlining the scope and length of the content as early as possible is vital if the designer is going to have sufficient direction to move forward with.

This will save you some time since they won’t need to go back and forward a thousand times to make corrections. If the designer is aware of an approximate content length, types of content, and which pages of the website he needs to add the content to, he or she will be able to design the website based on that idea.

“The content writer should provide some sort of outline after the initial consultation with the designer and then they can get to work.”
— Sarah Brogan, a content editor at TopWritersReview.

Of course, making changes is inevitable but at least the corrections won’t be that drastic as if they went blindly into the process, not knowing what the other will do.

Keep it Adaptable

As it was mentioned, the changes are an inevitable part of website creation. For that reason, the content needs to be manageable and flexible so that the designer can adjust the layout to create something that the reader will intuitively get to grips with.

In addition, the layout needs to work in harmony with the overall flow of the content. In case that the content writer creates a good copy that can’t be left out but it doesn’t go with the intended layout, the designer needs to be open to making changes.

They should both do their work but keep in mind that there should be room for improvement and changes considering that the project doesn’t rely only on one person.

Images and Words Work Together

Images which follow the content’s idea can have a great impact on the readers’ experience because it helps them to visualize what they are reading.

When people hear or read information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

The content writer needs to think about where he or she can add images to reinforce what they are claiming. Images will help to better explain the key points and to break up the content to make it easier to read.

However, adding images is a part of website design so again you can see how these two elements intertwine.

In order to add these images and incorporate them in the overall website look, the designer and the writer need to discuss and agree on how to strategically add images which will follow the content and keep up with the design.

The content writers can inform the designers where they want to add the images or which content they want to break up with visuals. Then designers can find the images which will match the design.

Some Final Thoughts

The reality is that both website designers and content creators are essential when it comes to creating a successful website.

While people tend to argue and try to decide on which one is more important, it would be much easier if we all admit that their importance is equal and that they are at their best when they work together.