Designing For Content

Designing For Content

By Kelly Paal

We've all been told that a successful website has great content. The problem that I've discovered is what do you do with and how to you organize all this great content?

Below are some of the things that I've learned in the time I've had my own site. Now my particular situation is one where my site is constantly growing in content. I didn't start my site with all sorts of content at my finger tips. So the tips below are from that perspective.

1. Keep your content concise and simple. Of course make sure that there is enough there for your customers but don't write pages and pages of information.

2. Keep your content relevant to your site. Do not start putting unrelated content on your site. It will be confusing and won't help you draw customers into your site.

3. Organize, organize, and oh yes organize. Keep everything organized. I don't know how many photography sites that I've been on have these huge lists of how to articles, hundreds of them which is great, but they are completely unorganized and I guess they expect you to scroll down through all these articles to find what you want. So organize your content. Make it easy to find things. Whether that's through a search option or carefully organized subheadings. Make it easy for people to get what they need quickly.

4. My site has grown steadily but more than I ever expected and that created a problem that I didn't foresee in the beginning. As you add content and I assume new pages be aware of where you place these pages in the grand scheme of your web design. Just don't add new pages to the bottom of list of links. As the web site grows the list of links to your other pages could be quite long so keep some sort of pattern of organization so that as you add pages it will seem to fit in with the rest.

5. Out of date information. With all this content we're all adding watch for out of date information. Remove content with information on technology that is not longer used. And cycle out old information that just isn't read or was not very popular.

These are just a few things that I've learned in designing for content on my site.

About the Author

Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

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