Beyond UX: Why Content Design Matters More Than You Think

Your website is part of your service offering and content design is a part of your website. Your audience can’t find you without a website, but you want to ensure that the website they find is worth their time. While a shiny new website or app is great for your business, how does it benefit your audience? Do your clients know how to navigate the menus? Does your user experience become an immersive one or does it stonewall your readers and simply act as a funnel for sales? 

When you design a website, it should be with people in mind first. This will lead to greater conversions, brand awareness, and an improved user experience for your audience. The look of your website is important, but the content throughout leaves a lasting impression that completes the UX experience.

What is Content Design?

Content design is a customer-centric approach to solving problems by providing information to your audience exactly when they need it. For example, when you introduce a new product, people will immediately want to know what it does. When designing the web page for this product, your content design should mirror the thought process of the audience by incrementally providing answers to their questions. What does the product do, why do they need it, what are the benefits, how do you provide better services than others?

All of these questions should be answered in the copy as you write about it on the product page, with a smooth interface and images to match the quality of the copy. Content isn’t just the words on the page, but the collection of images, insights, titles, and designs that compose the page and engage the reader well before web design comes in.

 Content designers typically collaborate with multiple teams like researchers, product designers, and engineers to create the best design that conveys information that users’ need. Content design is more than just creating a web page, it’s the collaborative effort that prevents wasted time and resources for you and your audience. 

Why Content Before Web Design is the Best Move

Crafting the content before introducing it to the web design phase is crucial to a successful website. Creating on the fly can lead to issues with design, such as copy that doesn’t fit or feels misleading, images that don’t quite match the copy they accompany, or awkward sections of the page that leave your readers frustrated. Content designers are always trying to streamline the process so viewers can find exactly what they need, when they need it. 

Is Content Design and UX Writing the Same?

No, these are two different paths that a website can take to create copy for their website. A content designer is creating a tailored experience for the viewer through a combination of copy, imagery, SEO, and more. Some businesses, like GROW, split the role of content design up between members of the team, so each aspect of the process is honed to a fine edge. 

UX writing is the process of helping users navigate digital products with written content. However, this is all a UX writer provides. Copy is an important element, but hardly scratches the surface of what your services offer if done alone. UX writing is more for technical works that require more words to explain, personal blogs, or even web pages. The GROW team utilizes UX writing to an extent to create a framework for pages that the web designers use to flesh the page out further. 

How Does Content Marketing Play Into Google’s EEAT Guidelines?

As you create a website or app, SEO is always top of mind. What are people searching for, how do they find the information they need, and when will they reach the selling point? EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, which are metrics that Google uses to determine if your website is worth ranking higher or not on searches. It takes a keen eye to navigate SEO properly, and Google is always providing resources to help practitioners stay on top of their craft. 

Content marketing integrates SEO and organic design into the content design philosophy to create websites that closely align with EEAT guidelines. This is something GROW has extensive knowledge of and uses in all of our projects. Specifically, content design in this context refers to the Experience side of EEAT, where Google analyzes the user experience of a website to determine if it makes sense and is simple yet functional. 

The Always Be GROWing Philosophy

Content design is a passion that GROW embraces wholeheartedly. We believe that good content creates great websites and marketing, which is why we strive to provide the most engaging and cohesive content for all of our clients. Our team of content marketers function as content designers as well, providing specialized copy, imagery, design, socials, emails, and more to elevate the message of your business and reach a wider audience. If you feel like it’s time to bring new life to your website or brand, contact GROW Marketing Agency today.