Are you a copy stuffer? Shame…

Web copy is too valuable an asset to simply stuff into a finished web design. Learning to analyse and use copy as a design tool helps you make the right design choices and create unified websites tuned to their purpose. There’s more to a website than looking good and being easy to use.

For the website owner that means a website that works harder to get customers and for web designers that means producing more effective designs and overcoming “designers block”.

Using copy as a design tool

Copy has shape, texture and style that must work in harmony with a design. Words provide inspiration and design cues and has a voice, your voice, that the design should amplify not drown out. It is your copy’s structure that decides site architecture, navigation, focus points, sets the paths for visitors to follow and decides where to lead them.

Image isn’t the same as images and branding goes beyond a logo

What is a logo? It’s a succinct graphical representation of your brand, it isn’t your brand. Nor is it a corporate colour scheme or catchphrase. A brand is the public face of what you and your business are all about. And it is the public’s opinion of you and your business that ultimately decides what your brand is, they define and own it, not you. All you can do is guide opinion.

How do you guide opinion? Through effective communication … getting across your ideas, what you do and what you stand for, who you are and by delivering on what you promise. Without this behind your logo and graphics you don’t have a brand, you have nice graphics.

Image isn’t the same as images.

So copy, graphic design and web design working in harmony make for a more successful website?

Not one of the wildest ‘out there’ theories is it? So why is copy stuffing so prevalent? Copywriting is a valuable asset in web design, providing many useful tools to the designer and that means a more effective website.