190 - Content first v content later

Debate with Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley

Setting up the Debate

We questioned whether there was a debate here, but it appears that there is! It’s common for website contracts to state the website build is subject to receiving content and there are many products and services to help with that.

So is it better to get all the content ftom your WordPress website clients forst so that you don't have the back and forth, making sure that it's coming in to you in a timely manner, or are there benefits for the design process in being more iterative and allowing changes to happen as the sites develops; changes that might alter the length, size, shape of the content that you need?

Nobody would argue that having a prepared client is a bad idea, but some just are not 'that kind of person'! They don't understand what it is that you need, and all the clever language that you keep throwing around does not help them. They see it is your job to build their site and their content needs to fit into that, when it's finished. It's hard!

Many of us do SEO and marketing which can alter content, and even if only designing and building their WordPress website, we get involved in how the content is organised and what needs adjusting/tightening to be better suited to how visitors interact with the web.

So we take contrary positions and these are the main points that we thought would be up for discussion:

Content First - Nathan

• needed often just to understand better what the client does and how they interact with customers / those they serve
• it makes more sense to design to the nature and tone of the content
• how do you know what pages you need until you see what you need to represent?
• image content from clients may have a look and feel that need accommodating - maybe they have some kind of filtering on all their team photos
• even if the client is planning to produce new content it is better to see what they have already that can be used and what they could be missing
• without content we are effectively building templates - are we even needed!

Content Later - David

• for most of us it has taken years to understand what makes site content effective and we still continue to learn way to make landing pages psychologically effective to website users - providing the structure first can help a client produce better content
• getting client content can be worse than not getting anything - first you can get delayed trying to get it and only to have to upset them telling them that what they have is rubbish!
• we should be designing web copy (a specific skill where the copywriter usually provides site structure for it) - who specifically states that they only design to professional copy?
• startups may not have any content above a few photos - the website is the place where they first start to put something together and realise how difficult that is
• asking for content first assumes the client has accepted your processes and so you can legitimately not begin work until that process is complete
• business aims rather than content may produce concepts which demand a new approach to content - why are they even spending money on a new site if the old content did the job?
• SEO and sales funnels require a type of content a client would not have before needed
• basically we get involved in content so why not lead it and that means bringing something to the table first

Thanks to Timothy Preut of Tickyboom Design for suggesting this topic.

Mentioned in this episode:

Content Snare - this is a rock solid product to make this problem go away!