Content Design

When I used to design sites for my own small clients, I eventually settled on a very crude Content Strategy approach, in an earnest attempt to extract the information I needed to make an intelligent design.

I would ask clients to email me with a written description of their (say) homepage, containing between 5–7 “messages”, and to put a priority on each message. Something like this (with priorities numbered in brackets):

Welcome to Company X: We make awesome (1)
Buy This (2)
Buy That (2)
Read This (3)
Read This (3)
Read This Also (3)
And Read this (3)
Click here (4)

I made it clear there can be *only one* number one priority. But you can have multiple twos and threes, for example. It’s a very crude system, but it really helped me to layout the information. And it really helped to avoid rounds of changes.

The clients still often perceived these “messages” like post — something to be delivered. Akin to stating “Here is my house” to a neighbour, and not expecting a reply. And often no thread would tie these “messages” into a coherent discourse. Akin to a rambling drunk, obsessed with his own belongings.

You see, I really like to believe clients want to talk with their customers, not at them. And I see a web page as a thread of conversation. Or, at the very least, if a client doesn’t want to converse with a…