Content consumers have been spoiled and their expectations are higher than ever as technology has created an on-demand world of instant gratification. Over my career as a Designer and Creative Director I've created, edited, formatted and marketed content for a variety of amazing clients and throughout that process noticed a simple formula for success that separates the blah from the kick-ass and gets your audience more engaged.
D.I.C.E. your content
As content chefs, you need to be focused on your audiences' digestion. To make sure your delicious content is digestible, it’s best to D.I.C.E. Make sure your content is...
- Delightful (Entertaining): People want to be entertained. This doesn't mean you need to be funny or dramatic (unless the goal is to be); just make sure your content is interesting and memorable. This can be tricky since in order to be delightful it needs to be accompanied by a sense of taste. You don't want to seem goofy by overdoing it.
- Insightful (Utility): Offer your consumers utility. Make sure your content is useful and relevant to your audiences' interests. Create content that will both pique their interest and enrich their day.
- Convenient (Formatted): Content is no longer king. Convenience is. Your content needs to be easily found, understood and consumed. Responsive design has really helped content convenience as now it can be served up in multiple formats optimized for each screen resolution. I advocate that you take it further and find the balance between visual and text-based content. Playing each to their strengths will not only enrich your communication but help your audience digest it faster. This way you are widening your message's chance at comprehension with visual and contextual learners.
- Empathetic (Relatable): Content that your audience can self-identify with and relate to will create a strong emotional connection. I mean, isn't that the desire of every brand on the planet to connect to its audience on an emotional level.
Visual content: The canary in the coal mine.
All brands want to excite, engage and inform their audience, but let’s face it today’s online consumers have A.D.D and demand instant gratification; they need to be attracted in the first half-second of viewing a webpage or they bounce. Visual content is the first type of content that quickly confirms quality, empathy, uniqueness, and taste at this stage. If an image is worth 1000 words, the wrong one can instantly undo all the great work that it's accompanying messaging has built. To assure your content is visually alluring, take a quick look and confirm:
- Content is well designed: (clear content hierarchy, typography best practices, padding, spacing, etc). Don't be afraid of white space. Eye relief is your friend.
- There is a good balance between text and imagery.
- Data that can be visualized is accurately portrayed in an engaging way.
- Images look authentic; Choose your stock photography very carefully. If it feels played out at all, avoid it like the plague.
Content is UX
Content for a new site never comes quick enough. In an ideal world, the design phase wouldn't start until all final content was in hand. For a Designer to appropriately solve a problem and streamline the user experience, they need to understand all the parts and pieces. Well, those pieces are content, baby. “@zeldman: Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration.” But this isn't an ideal world. We have all become too complacent using lorem ipsum as placeholder content. The time we save moving forward without final content so we can expedite the design phase faster is then undone when the real content is finally in hand and it breaks the agreed layout; needing considerable extra time and attention to amend. Having final content from the project start ensures that designers understand content constraints and assure the delivery and communication of the content enhances the overall experience.
Possibly the best compromise is to take the same prototyping model that we use for wireframing and apply it to content. Starting off with rough content (possibly from the current website, if it's a redesign), adding it to our imperfect prototypes and then refining both content and layout together until succinct. Content shouldn't be created in a vacuum. Designers and copywriters need to keep communication open and know when to bend to each others point of view. Imarc uses content production tools such as Gather Content to help well “gather” content (great brand name, you guys - seriously) and start accounting for every page of the new site and consolidating content for it. This way, the whole project team has visibility into how the content is shaping up and we can incorporate up-to-date content in our wireframes and visual designs. This method speeds up our process and assures that our designs are thoughtful in solving the problem.
Less is more.
Boom.
Do you need a sous-chef in your content kitchen? Let's talk!
