Most web designers think that their role is creating the design without creating the content of the pages of the website, where it is not limited to navigation, menus, contact information, mission, and vision, but sometimes is also blog posts, images, videos, and audio, most web designers use Lorem Ipsum, but when it comes to delivering the first version to managers to fill the website pages with real information you need to create some basic content at least.

The Difference Between Old School and Modern School Web Designers

Old school web designers require the client to write the content at a later time of the process of making the design, which will destroy their design and user experience, so the modern web design school says you should have the content before or during the creation of the design to avoid unwanted results and redoing the design of content.

Catchy statement and call-to-action paragraph is not written well by the clients, and even with some copywriters you do not get that much quality too, so you need to edit or rephrase the content to serve SEO and your client’s website needs.

Content is Part of the Web Design Process

Content is not limited to text, it also contains images, gifs, PDFs, audio, and video, which in most cases is created by the web designer or generated from a text document or storyboard that is provided by the client, so content is a major part of the web design process.

Sometimes web designers are also responsible for client’s or company’s Youtube Channel that require Animation skills whether it is 2D or 3D animation, but a web designer in general needs some content creation skills, to cut the expenses on the clients who might cancel your work because of lack of good content.

Why Should We Start with the Content First?

Part of UX Research work is knowing the content the client wants to add to the website to deliver a user experience that matches his/her vision, so we need to be provided with most of the content before starting in the web design process.

To meet a real-world production-ready website you need to have real content to fill your website with and as I said before it is important to have this content before starting the web design process. therefore, the web designer’s role is to bring client business objectives and specialist knowledge, not to write pages of dummy content.

Also, some clients can not afford to hire copywriters for every little piece of the website, so whether you like it or not you as a web designer will need to have content creation skills. And that is because clients do not hire copywrites because they do not know what to tell them to write, so if you did not write the content yourself you will be responsible to explain to the copywriters about the titles and topics he/she will write about for your client.

Main Goal of Knowing Content Before Designing

You need to take the content phase seriously, the main point here is to include your client in the discussions about their website content and structure. some web designers disappear into the office and weeks later they provide a “finished” product. While some clients appreciate a ready-made-for-you service, most of them find greater satisfaction by being brought into the process. You also will do a better job when you draw on their attention and knowledge and experiences in your design. so that is why content is part of the web design process.

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