How to get the content side of your website project right
Over the last twenty-plus years, I’ve led and supported many website projects, often brought in specifically to manage the content side of the work. Time and again, I see the same pattern: smart organisations invest heavily in design and build, but leave content until late in the process, when time, energy and confidence are already stretched.
This article brings together what I’ve learned from those projects: what works, what causes pain, and how to set your website up for success by treating content as the strategic asset it really is.
Why content matters more than people think
You want your new website to fit your organisation like a glove. To accurately reflect your brand and values, your people and services. To be useful, usable and enjoyable for your audiences, and to motivate the action you need to meet your goals.
Websites are primarily a vehicle for the delivery of content, yet too many website projects still focus on visual design and functionality at the expense of the content itself.
“No respected architect would plan out rooms without first considering the activities that will occur in those rooms. Consider content before format.”
― Margot Bloomstein, Principal of Appropriate Inc
The risk of leaving content too late
Not prioritising content from the start leaves your project open to real risk:
Delays in the launch of the site, often significant
Page templates that do not work for the final content, when it is too late to change them
Last-minute reviews that catch everyone unawares
Stressed and demoralised internal teams scrambling to produce large volumes of content in a rush at the end, rather than spreading the effort over time
Loss of trust, internally and extenally. And No-one wants that!
Content is web design, and it matters to the success of your site. Do not make it an afterthought. Invest in the content effort and get to work on it early.
This is the point at which many teams realise that content is not a side task. It is the engine of the entire project.
My fabulous client, Stephen McCulloch, Head of Marketing and Communications at national charity WithYou, reflected on their website project like this:
”Content is both the horse and the cart of any website project. You must start thinking about it from the very beginning, even before design and technical aspects. You need someone whose sole focus is content, someone like Sonja leading the charge, embedded in your team.”
(You can read more about the WithYou project and what we learned here → [Evolving WithYou’s Brand and Website].)
Content is a collaborative effort
The content effort takes leadership, organisation and close collaboration.
Creating valuable content requires real teamwork. You cannot simply outsource the job to a copywriter or content writer and expect them to get it right without input. The knowledge lives inside the organisation. Gathering that knowledge and turning it into good content is a collective task.
That means involving business leaders, subject matter experts, marketing and business development teams alongside writers. Often it also includes external specialists such as SEO, UX, brand, design, development, media, performance and analytics.
The best projects I’ve been involved in see content, design and technology working together iteratively and collaboratively. Designing around real words helps refine thinking, supports better decisions and reduces rework later on.
Your website will be all the stronger for it.
Ten steps to website content success
“Delivering great content requires some kind of investment: user research, strategic planning, meaningful metadata, web writing skills, and editorial oversight.”
― Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web
Create a content workstream for the project, alongside design and technical development.
Select a Content Lead to take responsibility for the content aspects of the site build. This person guides the content strategy, acts as lead editor, and works closely with the design and development team and people across the business.
Identify your writing team. This can include a creative copywriter for messaging + digital content designer/writer for web pages, working closely with subject matter leads from across the business.
Conduct a full audit of your current content. It is not glamorous, but it is essential. Include subsites as well as the main site. Review SEO and analytics, then decide what to keep, improve or retire. Content gaps will become clear from there.
Get organised. Create a proper content workflow system (we built a process using Monday.com at WithYou, or use a tool such as Gather Content). Version control in Word documents quickly becomes unmanageable, even on small projects.
Ensure content is in the room during the design phase. Build content needs into your personas and include content-specific questions about user journeys. Validate these with research and test content as you go.
Design around prototype content, not Lorem Ipsum. Placeholder copy leads to poor design decisions. The consequences of this are well documented and still highly relevant (Read: How Lorem Ipsum makes your web project fail - written in 2013 but still so relevant today).
Support your subject matter experts - interview them, give them templates, run supportive and structured writing sessions/retreats. Make it as easy as possible for them to contribute alongside their day jobs.
Create a content style guide, aligned with the brand, and offer writing training where it is needed across the organisation.
Think content governance and plan for the future. Decide who will be responsible for the site content once the project ends, so it continues to improve over time.
Valuable content, valuable website
A well-designed website filled with valuable content that meets both your organisation’s needs and your audience’s goals can be genuinely transformational.
If you are at the start of a website project, now is the moment to ask some honest questions about how content will be led, supported and prioritised.
Getting that right early will make every other part of the project calmer, clearer and more effective.