Planning content for your website, it’s like making a pizza.

I’m hungry and craving pizza so I’m going to use this analogy to help you plan content for your website. Why? Because pizza is delicious and we see too many websites where content is an afterthought so we’re going to change that, one website at a time.

Our most successful web design projects are where we have all the content planned, collated and carefully curated upfront front. Front and centre, before we begin. That way we design with content, the content and design play nicely together and there’s no shoe horning anywhere.

Excuse me for dumbing it down a little but like I said, I’m hungry and my brain doesn’t work without carbs. That seems like a good place to start…

1. The Base

The base of a pizza is make or break, do you want thick crust (hell yes) or thin crust, either way you want it cooked to perfection so that you have a good foundation.

When we start looking at the base, we break it down into a simple question. What’s the purpose of this page?

This is the golden rule, start with your target audience and write down the goal of the page.

2. The Sauce

You’ve got the purpose of the page down, and next stop on the pizza production line is the sauce. Now let’s not get too argumentative but it needs to be a good, rich tomato sauce. None of that barbecue crap. The questions we must answer are :

• What is the problem/issue you’re trying to solve?
• What is the solution/status that we are trying to move towards?

Answer these with your target audience in mind.

3. The Cheese & Toppings

Oh here’s where it starts getting really good, you can really judge someone’s personality by the cheese they choose. I’m really talking about the reason we all eat pizza, it’s for the cheese and toppings. Going back to copy and content though, we’re talking about the raison d’être… What is the key benefit you are providing?

And then remember you can have all the toppings and combinations in the world… but what do your target audience like to eat and give them that. You can really add flavour and make it interesting so go on it’s your recipe but get some anchovies on there! And for heavens sake please don’t put sweet corn on a pizza.

Once you have all the ingredients lined up and perfectly combined in the right order, now you can bake your creation.

If you can’t cook, then we highly recommend eating out or hiring a chef.

Now what’s for dinner?