Back in a Bit

Content Strategy Within The Design Process

While wrapping one’s head around content strategy might be difficult, the thing that makes it work is very simple: good communication. Sometimes a project moves along like a sports car on a superhighway. Other times, the road is so full of bumps and potholes that it’s a wonder we ever reach our destination. As we explore the relationship between content strategy and design, I’ll detail how I keep the channels of communication open and go over the workflow processes that I’ve used to support that effort. I hope that sharing my experiences (both positive and negative) will help you contribute to and manage projects more effectively and deliver better products to clients.

Don’t “Click here”

There are millions of things one can do wrong with a Web site. There’s invalid markup, blatant spelling errors, horribly distracting animations, senseless navigation, the overuse of objects that require plug-ins like Flash or Java applets, the use of proprietary, client-specific technology, over-design, under-design, and illegibility, to name a few. All of these things bug me as much as any other developer who’s paying attention. But there’s one particular thing that gets under me on a deeper level, probably because so many site producers who actually care about their users succeed at avoiding those pitfalls but often fall into this one, which is just as much a disservice to the user and the Web at large as the others: using the words “click here” in a text link.