All web designers usually all follow similar strategies when it comes to your website content. You (the client) supplies the content and we (the web designer) design the site around the content.
This makes sense for a lot of reasons the most glaring being:
Cost – Web design contractors are usually paid at a higher hourly rate for their unique skills and experience. Paying a web designers rate to write content that could probably be handled by one of your staff members at a lower hourly rate, is much more cost effective.
You know your business better – In order for a web designer to write about your business, they would have to research what you do, what makes you unique in your field, your capacities products and skills. This would require a substantial amount of time conducting meetings and interviews as your web designer got up to speed about what your website should say, all at a hefty contractors rate.
Industry terminology and jargon – most industries have jargons and language that are unique, terminologies that mean something to insiders that make no sense to those of us that are not in the industry.
There are many other reasons we won’t waste your time with here.
So now that you are ready to send your web designer your content, here are some important things to know.
- Make sure it is your final draft.
It can really stretch your relationship with your web designer when you have to change your content for the 5th time because you didn’t review and edit properly in the first place. Making quick changes to a word document is easy, but a website is much harder to change, and you are paying a high hourly rate for your changes
2. Start each new webpage on a new Word Doc page.
When things are sent to us in one long list it is hard for us to decipher which goes where using consistent page numbers and headings helps us understand how you want your content displayed.
3. Don’t try to design it.
What you can design in Word and what you can design in web code are two entirely different things. For one a word document has only one size but we have to make sure it fits on a big screen tv, a tablet an iPhone and a watch. Waisting your time trying to design it on an A4 page is pointless.
4. Use two to three colours max.
Using too many colours confuses the reader and makes it hard for people to work out what is clickable, what is a heading and what is just plain text.
5. Be consistent.
Keep the styling of all element types the same. Headings, body text, bullet points and lists; use the same consistency and it will help us to know how to lay out the content.
6. Send images as attachments.
When you copy and paste an image into a word document it is useless to us. Word compresses the image and makes it too small for us to use on your website. Send your images as attachments or share a dropbox or Google drive with us.
Prepping your side of your website project is the key to keeping your costs low and your deadlines on track. Let your designer help you guide the project, they pump out more sight in a week that you will in a year. Use their experience to help streamline your project.
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