If content is king, how important does that make design?
If you’re in online business, you will no doubt have heard it time and time again – “content is king”. It’s become a buzz phrase in the online community and a mantra for those looking to create meaningful, profitable connections with a growing audience of informed, empowered digital consumers.
When it comes to web design in Melbourne, content is just as important as anywhere else in the world. Customers don’t buy things because the website on which they appear has strong lines and pretty colours. They don’t (for the most part, at least) consciously judge how effective or user-friendly a site or store’s navigation is and make a buying decision based on that.
Web designers in Melbourne know that the key persuasive element of a website is what it says – not what it looks like. But this doesn’t mean design has become redundant – far from it, in fact.
Content might be at the top of the food chain when it comes to making a different to people’s buying decisions. But design is crucial to user experience – and user experience, if you pay attention to trends in web design in Melbourne, has become one of the driving forces in modern design and development. User experience, or UX as it’s known, is a particular way of approaching design with the user in mind.
By considering layout, navigation, the organisation and presentation of textual content, images, banners and so on, designers put themselves in the consumer’s shoes and try to create digital experiences that are positive, compelling and – in the case of ecommerce websites or online stores – persuasive without being pushy, convincing without being clich.
Great content is key to making sales in the online marketplace. But it’s not so important that it can be relied upon to be successful without the presence of high-quality, UX-focused design. While words do most of the work in promoting products and persuading consumers of their value, design remains vital to embellishing the message and contributing to a positive browsing (and buying) experience.
While it is very important to grasp the fact that copy is crucial to making an online store work, it is also worth tempering the idea that content is king with an understanding of how vital design is to creating a positive user experience and a digital environment in which prospective customers can feel empowered and unimpeded from finding the information, products or services they seek.
