Re-Thinking the Way We Design Websites

Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing With Web Standards, said it best, “content proceeds design, design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration”. In today’s rapidly growing web industry simple communications and public relations methods are often ignored. Understanding your audience and key messaging are still important and should be the first things considered before beginning any communications or marketing project, including web development.

Over the past year, our team at Echidna has been re-thinking the way in which we design and develop functional, user friendly websites, resulting in a shift from design before content, to content before design. In our opinion, design should be based around content.

At Echidna, our web development process begins with a Discovery Meeting, where clients are asked to think about simple, yet extremely important communication questions before talk about web design even begins:

Understanding your audience:

• List all types of visitors to your website
• Rank these visitors in terms of importance (1, 2, 3 etc.)
• Weight these visitors in terms of importance (50%, 20%, 10%, 10%, 10%)

Key message:

• List the key messages for each type of visitor to your website - is there one message, are there multiple messages?

Content information:

• For each type of visitor make a brief list outlining the types of content your want available on the website

Understanding the content and basic communications behind a client’s web-development project not only makes sense, it can help create the design. For example, knowing the amount of content, content types and messaging can help:

• Determine the number of navigation areas – is a secondary or third level navigation required?
• Determine if “breakout content” is required – testimonials or block quotes that can help break up a content heavy site.
• Determine the size and number of images on a web page.
• Determine the page titles and use of “talking headings” – talking headings are lengthier than normal headlines or titles and help to give users an idea of the information contained on a web page.
• Determine the use of call to actions, such as a “call us”, A “contact us” or A “get a quote today” button, throughout the website.

No matter what marketing project you’re beginning, communications and public relations will always remain important. We’re not saying design isn’t a key aspect in web-development and building a successful site, but we believe that the design is something that will come naturally once you understand your audience, key message and content types.