The lowdown on content design

What content design means

Content design is a process for creating web content (often written, but not always) that meets the needs and expectations of people using a website.

Content designers are advocates for the people using a website.

The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to find and understand the information they need online.

To achieve this, content designers:

• research and learn about the people who use a website, such as what information they need, where they get stuck, the language and terms they know
• use data and insights, such as behavioural data from Google Analytics, to make decisions or to improve web content
• structure web content following government web accessibility and usability requirements
• write in plain English as much as they can
• work with other designers and web specialists
• work and manage relationships with subject matter experts.

The ‘design’ in content design

The design aspect of content design can often confuse people.

Content designers aren’t graphic designers or website designers (although we often have skills in these areas).

By ‘design’ we simply mean that content designers work through a user-centred design process, similar to the process that UX or service designers work through.

Content design process

Content designers work through a process that focuses on the people using a website and its content.

The process is similar whether you’re working on a new web project developing content from scratch, or you’re redesigning existing content.

A content design process can include:

• strategy – overall goals of content, roadmap, defining the content’s users/audience etc.
• research – learning about your audience: their behaviours, problems they encounter and language they use
• ideation – information architecture (IA) or how you’ll organise web content, language and content prototyping
• design/create – developing and creating content and content structure
• review – getting feedback from users, peers, key stakeholders and business owners
• publish – laying out and publishing content in a content management system (CMS)
• continuous improvement – testing content with users, content audits etc.

In reality, because of time constraints or because content designers are brought onto a project later than what’s ideal, you often don’t get to work through this full process. However, understanding the steps is important so you can at least prioritise what’s achievable.

Consider whole design

The design aspect also means you look at the whole design of a website or webpage when considering web content.

You won’t look at content in isolation. You’ll consider things like:

• visual design and how you could use size, colours and styles to enhance content
• people’s behaviours and how they interact with a website (you might use tools like Google Analytics to help with this)
• website styles and design guides for consistency
• web accessibility
• information architecture/the hierarchy and structure of content.

What skills are needed

Content designers have a highly specialised skillset. People often come from other web, design or content backgrounds before specialsing in the role.

A content designer’s job is much broader than writing content or copy for the web.

While writing for the web is often a big part of the job, it also involves:

• understanding and working through a user-focused design process
• researching audiences – who they are, what language and terms they use and understand (you might use web analytics to help with this)
• finding content or web problems that people face and finding ways to solve them
• understanding how people read digital content online
• understanding and applying web accessibility practices
• using data and analytics to make evidence-based decisions and improvements to content
• knowing basic HTML
• understanding information architecture (IA)
• knowing how to use and manage content management systems (CMS)
• managing relationships and working closely with stakeholders, for example policy makers
• negotiating and advocating on behalf of the user of a website
• working closely with other design roles, for example user experience (UX) designers, developers, user researchers and service designers.

You can learn more about who content designers work with and how they fit into a design team.

Who content designers work with

Getting the timing right

The timing of when you develop web content is important.

A common (and I hope dying) approach is to focus heavily on the design and appearance of a website then try to fit content into that design.

You’ll use placeholder text like Lorem Ipsum to fill in where the content will eventually go and will come up with the actual content later.

Good web content is created when it’s considered from the start – as part of the design and development process of a website.

Now, I understand that often there’s time and money restrictions and you might be using a website builder like WordPress, Squarespace or Wix.

These have predesigned templates so you’ll often be put on the path of leading with design rather than content. But you can at least prioritise content BEFORE selecting a template.

Before choosing a template or creating a design you can at least:

• research – who your audience is, what people search for online, what content or topics are most popular etc.
• work out what content is needed and make a plan
• create web content based on your research
• think about how you’ll organise and structure it.

You’ll get better results doing these tasks first. This is because you’ve taken the time to understand your target audience and created content that focuses on meeting their needs.

You’ll take that awesome content, enhance it with visual web design and develop a website that works well from the start. This will save you time and money in the long run.

Benefits of content design

Ultimately content design helps to improve the web experience for everyone using a website.

It can help create web content that’s:

• easy to navigate and find, which saves time and reduces frustration for users
• easy to understand as it uses the language and terms known by people using a website
• accessible and meets web accessibility requirements
• informative and answers people’s questions or solves their problems – helping people to make informed choices.

From a business perspective content design can help:

• improve website traffic, search engine optimisation (SEO) and rankings in Google
• meet web standards, such as web accessibility requirements
• improve completion rates for online services or sales
• target markets that might be ignored by competitors (achieved by making content more accessible)
• save time and money as you’re less likely to have content issues later on
• build trust and establish regular customers.

Making your web content easy to find, use and understand is ultimately good for business.

The content design industry in NZ

Content design is growing in NZ, especially in the government and banking sectors where the content designer role is increasingly common.

The NZ Digital Service Design Standard

The Digital Service Design Standard lists content designers as a needed role when creating a government digital service. So, it’s an important role when creating a design team.

Create and empower an interdisciplinary team – NZ Digital Service Design Standard

Good content designers are in high demand so it’s often difficult to find people with the right skills when you need them. You could consider training and upskilling yourself or your staff with these important skills.

Content design 101 course

Private training and coaching