Having a powerful website and a good user interface is important, not only for your visitors' experience, but also for marketing purposes. SEO. That said, without good content in place, everything you have planned and organized well risks being of no use.

Creating a content-centric design

Want to tell a story through the website you've built? But how can you create a story through design, if you don't even know the message you want to communicate through the content? My suggestion: Take an approach in building your website similar to how you can prepare for a blind date.

The discord between your design and content can lead to confusion and frustration among your visitors. That's why content should receive a higher consideration in the process of developing your WordPress site. Without these words (or at least the underlying message behind these words), You will not be able to effectively build a website.

Weigh the pros and cons of a content-centric design

At first, you may feel reluctant to mix your development process with content. After all, everything seems to work very well right now. But if you have not tried to put the crux on your website (more precisely on the contentHow can you really be sure that your process is fully optimized?

Let's take a look at the pros and cons of a content-centric WordPress development process:

The benefits of content-centric design

Clear Guidelines

While you may feel more restricted in how creative you can be in terms of the design, which is a good thing. You need a rigid structure in place and a "story" to follow when building your website. By having a content-centric design, you won't have to change the design to accommodate content that contradicts or contrasts it.

Superior quality content

With a content-centric design, you will no longer have to ask your writer (or client) to shrink or move the content because what was written does not match an already approved design. Your site's messaging can be kept in its original state, which is intended for the way you build your design around that content.

The disadvantages of a content-centric design

Restructuring the process

Restructuring from a design-centric design to a content-centric design will undoubtedly be a big shift in how you approach your projects in the future. This will not only allow you to save time and money in the restructuring, but it will affect the members of the team who will need to follow a training, the same goes for customers.

Additional costs

If you don't have a reliable source for content creation right now, you'll need to find one. Not all authors are expensive, but you may have a hard time finding a loan to work for pennies.

How to implement a content-centric design?

Creating wordpress content

Digital composite of business graphics with office background

You want to keep your process under control, running costs, and everything running logically and smoothly. Create the heart of your website first, then let your design flourish creatively around it.

Do you want to implement a content-centric approach first, without launching your entire business into disarray? Here is a list of items that will allow you to transition smoothly. You will see that all the work you are doing is here, will simply have to be reorganized.

Step 1: Preparation

First, discuss the strategy with your client. Then discuss the relevant points with all the other participants in the project.

Create a style guide, if your customer does not already have one.

Give your opinion on your client's current site and evaluate what kind of starting point or reference point you will work on.

Define which ones need pieces of content to be created based on a customer crawl of the sitemap.

Create fact sheets that include each page of the site and a brief overview for each.

Step 2: Create Content

Provide a writer, publisher and SEO with the data sheets, a style guide, the client's current site, and any other reference material you have. Remind them of the mission and objectives of the site.

Write the content, including header tags, metadata, calls to action, sidebar content, and more.

Question the content and make sure it answers your visitors' questions.

Also, be sure to review the content for its mobile friendliness. While a well-designed site might be a good thing back then, having less space on content means content needs to be kept brief on all platforms.

Examine the content with the client and obtain approval. It will take time to rewrite the content, but it will also ensure that you do not waste time later on rewriting and redesigning your site.

Step 3: Design and Develop

Build the design of your site around the content. Use the initial project specifications, as well as the general design best practices in your guide. These could include:

  • Customer design preferences
  • Strategic use of white space to highlight content
  • Selecting design elements that fit with the story, such as:
    • The color scheme
    • Images
    • The typography
  • The inclusion of content breaks and layout to improve the readability of content
  • The development of the customer journey through the strategic placement of call-to-action button
  • Choosing a Responsive Design
  • Make sure the design and content is in combination with one or the other. They need to tell the same story to be effective.
  • Review the content and design of the site with your client.

With customer approval, complete your website development using your usual process.

That's it for these tips, I hope you can now create a content-centric design of a WordPress blog.