Thought

The words are the website: how content shapes digital experiences

Lucia McGuinness

Websites are a vital interface between organisations and their audiences. Will your approach to content design hinder your brand’s potential or elevate it to greatness?

Whether repositioning your company, launching a new product or re-evaluating your marketing strategy, your website is a key tool in communicating your evolution. Done well, it optimises long-term results by attracting and retaining customers. At its best, a website can even help shift the industry.

Is that hyperbolic? Think about what Netflix did with DVD rentals, or Amazon with e-commerce. Or how Emily Weiss built a brand founded on content and fuelled by an online community. Back in 2014, Glossier subverted the rules of the beauty industry by giving every customer the power to become an influencer.

In all of these cases, the single-minded messages and clear user experience helped build brands that people came to know, trust and love.

Mixed messages?

But it’s easy to get it wrong. We’ve all experienced websites that give mixed messages, where the story feels incoherent or just doesn’t match our expectations of the brand. Finding simple information feels fraught with difficulty and builds frustration. The result of these poor micro-engagements is a downward shift in our perception of the brand.

So why can it feel so hard to get a website done properly?

In my experience there are three key questions you need to ask before starting the design or build of a site:

 

  • What is the overall role of our website?
  • What do our audiences need or want from our website?
  • How do our internal teams perceive our website?

We’ve all experienced websites that give mixed messages, where the story doesn’t feel coherent or that just don’t match our expectations of the brand. Finding simple information feels fraught with difficulty and builds frustration.”

The battle for real estate

Website projects have an uncanny way of throwing up the most challenging questions about your business. Because in many ways the site becomes the most tangible representation of it.

That requires your organisation to be clear about what you’re selling, and to whom. And why you’re the best choice in the market. It needs complete alignment from the brand, marketing, sales and product teams — and, of course, the leadership team.

To build this consensus, we use several tools, from stakeholder interviews to workshops. A core part of this work is listening carefully to what the teams are saying. What are their requirements and how might we provide them with a website that will amplify their work and not hinder them.

The groundwork can feel frustrating at times. There’s no tangible outcome, like fancy new designs or prototypes to play with. But it’s fundamental to building a website that’s fit for purpose. By understanding the content, and the resources available to maintain it, we can develop a website to meet your audience’s needs.

If we skip this step or don’t spend enough time building consensus, cracks appear quickly: blog posts not updated, salesy messages at the wrong moment, bloated sites that are hard to maintain.

So, the first step of any website project is to fully understand how it will best support the business goals across all departments.

Make the website your best tool

Too often, website projects are tackled in isolation. The site is considered a standalone entity, or a singular destination. But this isn’t how people use the internet. They browse, search, skim-read and make split-second decisions on the content they’ll spend time with.

Understanding your audience’s behaviours — where they currently spend time, who they trust and what they’re looking for — ensures your website gets the traffic you want. We need to understand the broader picture of how people will engage with the site.

A successful website forges a meaningful connection with its users. It answers their questions and guides them to what they need. And the primary vehicle to make this connection is content.”

Importantly, we need to know your visitors’ state of mind. Are they ready to buy, or casually browsing and gathering intel? Are they at a point of crisis, or shopping for a relative’s birthday gift? Where did they hear about you? Are they already aware of your brand or are you completely new to them?

Answer these questions through audience research and user personas. Map journey beyond the site itself and identify clear user goals. This work will tell you how to structure content and optimise it for your different audiences.

Beyond all that is one key question: What is the fundamental role of the site? A shop window for your customers (e-commerce)? An employer brand tool, to attract the best talent? A way to raise brand awareness through engaging and useful content? Or is it all of the above? If so, which is the most important aspect?

The right story at the right time

A successful website forges a meaningful connection with its users. It answers their questions and guides them to what they need. And the primary vehicle to make this connection is content. Through carefully crafted words, images and multimedia elements the site communicates your brand’s identity, values and mission.

When your messaging resonates with users, they’re more likely to engage, trust and ultimately convert. So content is the bridge that carries the brand’s character and aspirations into the user’s consciousness.

Good content pulls the elements of a website into a coherent and meaningful experience. It engages people by taking them on a journey and communicating your value.”

In this instance, less is more. Bombarding your audience with too much information will make it harder to convince them of your value. Instead, we use Progressive Disclosure to introduce stories gradually.

This means starting with essential information, then revealing more complex narratives as the user engages. Through strong visual hierarchy and design principles, we can then personalise journeys based on a visitor’s interactions and preferences, carefully curating their experience with dynamic content. So they see the stories that are most useful and engaging to them.

Weave a meaningful experience

So, how do your internal teams perceive your website? What’s the overall role of your website? And what do your audiences need or want from your website? Once you’ve answered these three questions you can confidently start to picture what your website needs to be. It’s the foundation for your digital experiences.

Like all digital projects, it’s then an ongoing journey of optimisation: from A/B testing stories and crafting SEO strategies, to ensuring your site is accessible and continuously monitoring performance. This optimisation is vital to developing a high-performing website. It can even give you insights in how to lower the environmental impact of your site — but that’s for another post.

Good content pulls the elements of a website into a coherent and meaningful experience. It engages people by taking them on a journey and communicating your value. It’s the path that invites people to experience your brand and, ultimately, choose it ahead of others.

A website is not just about visual design or seamless navigation, although those are vital. Content holds the power to entertain, inform and connect with people on a profound level. Your approach to it can make or break the effectiveness of your website.

Artwork

Patrick Staunton

Lucia McGuinness

In her role as brand and digital Strategy Director, Lucia (she/her) has solved a range of challenges for some of the UK’s fastest-growing companies, providing the clarity and creativity to help them stay ahead. Her main focus is on making sustainability rewarding for business, while keeping it beautiful and playful for audiences.

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