Once upon a time, in a world wide web far away, it was said that Content was King, and everyone believed it. Then along came a new religious cult called the Content Management System, and the people decided that the King didn’t really matter that much any more, and that they would build their kingdom how they wanted, despite having no idea what they were doing, and worry about the interiors later.
Somehow between now and then, everyone seems to have forgotten that monarchy even exists.
The kingdom is now full of grandiose castles with fancy entrances… but nothing inside, except perhaps a few mismatches pieces of junk that don’t seem to belong there and really aren’t that useful. In fact, it looks like most of them might have even been stolen from somewhere else.
But it’s time for the cult of the CMS to be brought back down to size, and for people to start treating content with the respect it deserves…
The importance of content strategy
Commissioning a content management system doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your content the same careful consideration and forwarding planning you would if you were producing a static site, and had to pay for every change.
Key aspects of a good website are great design and sound information architecture. Getting this right makes all the difference to the user, and ultimately to the success of the business.
Populating content via a CMS requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of basic user experience and information architecture best practise – something that not all clients can be expected to have. Not only does allowing clients to manage content deflect from adequate consideration of content during the design process, it also leads to dodgy DIY – of the content variety.
Too often content is treated as something that just needs to get done, and focuses on what clients want to say, not what users need to find.
Don’t even get me started about what Google’s going to think about it all! (Yes, yes, I know that Google can’t actually think… yet…) Copy, page titles, page headings, key word density and image tags and linking are all crucial to good search engine performance, which all goes out the window with the DIY approach that CMS systems facilitate. Similarly – in terms of validation – a site can only be as valid and accessible as the content that’s put into it. Professionally and carefully considered content makes a web project more user-centric by proxy.
Meanwhile, in the real world…
It’s certainly a luxury to get final content before starting design and Information Architecture (IA) work. If this was the way things happened, we’d all be sitting around twiddling our thumbs, and very little design would ever get done at all.
But think about this. How can we get the IA right without the actual information? How can we design something that isn’t even there? Design and development without the real content is, at best, totally speculative.
While the evolutionary nature of online media is something I love, one of the down sides is definitely the “worry about it later” attitude when it comes to content.
There are many things that the web can learn from print – and one of them is more careful consideration of content. Although copy is often the last thing to come with print design as well, it gets carefully considered, edited, proof-read and proof-read again, to ensure that it’s perfect and looks great, because the medium of print is so final.
So what the point of a CMS then?
A CMS has it’s time and place – but without considering content as an integral part of the design and development process, it can be more of a hindrance than a help. The use of a CMS should aid content strategy, not replace it.
I’ve also found that few clients actually really use a CMS very much once their site is launched, which begs the question – was it really necessary? It’s all about considering your content from the start. So you know what you want to say. Then think about it again – how often will you actually be updating your content? If you work out what you want to say properly, much of it shouldn’t change.
Money spent on an all dancing, all singing CMS may be better spent on professional copywriting, or an ongoing agreement with your agency (or friendly freelance communications professional) with regards to maintaining your content.
A good balance can be to have some aspects of a site content managed – such as news sections, documents and job postings – with core information that doesn’t need to change being written professionally and optimised for search engines. (NB: updating copy regularly is great for SEO, so this is where CMS can be useful, but not if the content is of poor quality).
In the informal, banter-ish nature of last week’s SkillSwap, a good chuckle was had around the ideal versus the reality of designing around ACTUAL content, but it just got me thinking that we all just need to try harder. That means all of us.
After all – after spending all this time and money on great design, fancy animation and slick development – it’s what’s inside that really counts.
For more information on copywriting, content management systems, information architecture and content strategy, contact Jasmine Wilkinson