Why designing effective websites is about more than just looks, the substance of your content is everything.

How your website looks is one of its most important success factors. After all, when you walk into a store that is clean, well presented, modern and sleek - you cant help but feel like you're somewhere safe. Behind the facade though, the true power lies in its content - we reckon, more than ever.

The importance of content in Web Design

Content is king. Thats right. The adage from forever ago is still as relevant today as it ever was.

While a good looking design is important and goes a long way to building trust in your brand and message, compelling and relevant content is what keeps users engaged. Content serves as the voice of your brand, conveying your message, values, and expertise to your audience.

And content isn't just text. Our websites like Lodge, Hamilton Gardens and Hamilton Zoo prove visual content goes a long way toward building trust and elevating your brand.

To extend on this, your content is what guides the your websites user experience. Effective content provides clear information and calls to action, helping your audience navigate your site. Without quality content, even the most visually stunning website can fall flat - that means a lack of conversions.

How quality content drives user engagement

Your website content needs to foster a sense of trust and authority. And we wrote about building trust in this blog post. In this post, we talked about how your website needs to be a trusted expert, an extension of sales team and a representative of your brand. 

But lets look at an actual case study for this. Lodge Real Estate. 

When we designed and built the website for Lodge, one thing was really clear. People who visit the lodge website are looking for a trustworthy, reliable professional to help them sell their home.

By putting quality content in front of users, the Lodge website builds trust. And that trust drives user engagement. Real imagery of real people you that represent your business are an excellent way to combine building trust with quality content. Testimonials, reviews and success stories also go a long way.

When users find valuable and informative content, they are more likely to perceive your brand as a credible source, increasing the likelihood of conversions and long-term loyalty.

SEO: The Backbone of Effective Web Content

Having great content is important, but it is only as important as the impact it has. And to have impact, real people have to see it. 

The beauty of web is that you can optimise your website to be found by your ideal audience. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is essential for ensuring that your content reaches its intended audience now more than ever, an effective SEO strategy will help you maintain your businesses relevance. Particularly as AI search has ramped up the competition for customers attention.

When it comes to crafting content for your website, you need to make sure your text content is contains relevant keywords, keyword hierarchy, meta descriptions, labels and tagging that helps crawlers understand the context and relevance of your content to potential searchers.

At Black Sheep, this is something we're encouraging all of our customers to be taking more seriously. What happens now for instance when you visit a GPT and type a search relevant to your needs. Even at Black Sheep, this is an area we are focusing on for our business.

Effective SEO practices can improve your website's visibility in search engine results, driving organic traffic to your site.

This, in turn, can lead to higher engagement and conversions, as users who find your site through search are often actively seeking the information or services you provide. And again, this is all about creating effective content.

Balance form and function in your web design

An effective website strikes a balance between form and function. While visual design elements like layout, color scheme, and typography are important for creating an appealing user experience, they must support the delivery of your content. 

We're real believers that functionality should never be compromised for the sake of aesthetics. Even when we're pushing things like we have for one of our newest websites Te Whare Taonga

Even on a visually stunning website. Delivering an experience  that is difficult to navigate or lacks valuable content will ultimately fail to engage users.

The key is to integrate design and content seamlessly, ensuring that the site is both attractive and user-friendly.

This can be achieved through using effective sign posting, as well as clear labels to help users clearly understand where they are and what they can do next. This helps cut through confusing experiences, and allows brands to create more engaging websites, without compromising on usability.

Connecting people with real stories.

One of the most effective content strategies any website can employ today that will build trust is to tell real, human stories that connect users to the outcomes your brand or business is working hard to deliver. And we have examples!

We've read a number of website briefs recently and one of the most striking omission is how business are going to optimise their rebuild to connect with their customers.

Telling success stories is a great way to do just that, and we have some Inspo to help you tell customer stories that inspire and encourage your website visitors to seek the same results from you.

Lodge - Recent Success

You know, we love showcasing the lodge website, but it just has so much good stuff to it. One of those being, highlighting their success. How can your brand highlight its success to build trust with your audience?

Hamilton Zoo - Conservation Efforts Videos

While, talking about native wildlife rehabilitation might not quite be your Jam. Video is a wonderful way to connect people with real stories in a super engaging and interactive way.

Work Well - Simply telling real stories

It may sound basic, but even simply telling real stories on your website about real people who had real challenges and how they went about overcoming them can go a really long way toward building authenticity and trust.

Thinking even deeper about content with Responsive Design. 

When we talk about responsive design, we should think about more than just what content the user is looking at, bit also consider where the user is in their journey - both physically and digitally. 

While all websites should be responsive - you can also consider creating experiences that are adaptive to your users devices. Particularly if you have a highly active mobile user base. Thinking about  these experiences differently allows you to deliver the right content to your visitors in just the right way. We Love Design Rush's description of Responsive vs Adaptive design.

And we've got a real example of how we use Adaptive design to help businesses like Lodge deliver a unique navigation experience to users on desktop versus mobile devices. While the differences are subtle, they are there.

• Desktop vs Mobile screen sizes mean you can say more on desktop.
• Having a smaller screen size on mobile means we need to pack the entire nav into the menu icon.
• The mobile nav needs to be far more intuitive on mobile.
• Users need to get to important content faster on mobile

Final Thoughts from the team at Black Sheep about why designing effective websites is all about substance!

In a world where brands are battling it out for attention, it pays to reward the attention people choose to give your brand with respect and content that is going to deliver value.

With the rise of AI and GPT's it is tempting to quickly pull content together and publish it out of a sense of obligation that you need more content, more blogs, more videos and more images. 

The fact remains, website visitors will reward brands that provide value by giving your brand and message attention. And perhaps, if you do provide the right amount of value, for the right people at the right time, they will become a customer for your brand.