Priority structure in web content creation projects

Most web content projects include both structural and editorial aspects: for example, the information needs to be structured to fit the new responsive design, and the current text needs to be updated to conform to the basic principles of messaging and corporate style.

People often ask me in what order it is better to do the work: first create the structure, and then prepare the text, or vice versa? I have never had a single opinion on this matter, because, in my opinion, this is similar to the "chicken or egg" problem. If work on a project begins with a structure, I create content models with poor-quality information. If, on the contrary, we begin with texts, the writers do not understand how much text we need to fill the models, since the models do not yet exist. It seems that both of these areas have the same problems, so I have no reason to prefer one or the other.

(Please note that I’m not talking about starting without the project’s editorial foundations: understanding business goals, creating a message architecture and understanding what the work should lead to is the basis of any project. and creating a new text based on these fundamental principles).

Structure content first and then rewrite it.
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Recently, I completed the second phase of a project that we organized, focusing primarily on the structure, and I had many reasons for choosing this approach. I believe that an approach focused on structure makes sense in most of my projects, and here's why.

Content models are based on what the content is for, not what it reports

In particular, the text present in this project was terrible. Slang, clichés and almost complete uselessness. How could I build a model of useful content from bad content?

As I worked, I realized that the quality of the text — even if it is terrible — does not really affect the models. I do not build a model directly from the words contained in the content; instead, I build it based on the purpose it should serve. I really don’t care if the restaurant’s description looks like a teenager’s verse (I apologize to teenagers and poets): this is the restaurant’s description, and we need a short promotional version and a long full version. The description of the room for banquets should contain photographs taken relatively recently in good light, and their captions should use the appropriate brand “voice” describing what these rooms can be used for. In fact, I do not need to see high-quality photos and decent descriptions in order to create space for them in models.

Development of the influence of structural decisions and design direction

A comprehensive content model will help to fill in the content of all kinds of solutions on the site, from the choice of CMS to data formatting. Developers can make more appropriate architectural decisions when they have an idea of ​​what kinds of interactions exist between content types, and designers can organize a template library that will correspond to the degree of content model partitioning. The sooner the structuring is completed, the easier it will be to build an integrated design and development plans.

Attempts to squeeze low-quality content into good models are an extremely strong argument in favor of editing.

When working on projects focuses on structural aspects of work, we want to re-combine content for different channels or create a sensible responsive interface using structured fields — people often try to convince themselves that the current content is enough to do the job. “Of course, it could be improved, but now we don’t care.”

I did not see a more effective argument in favor of the importance of doing editorial work than to take an existing copy and see how crooked it fills the model that we have already approved as meeting our business goals.

The model I recently created included a type of content to place advertisements about the amazing customer service of the firm. When we started moving existing content to a new model, the only text we found for this purpose was limited to the phrases “free water with ice” and “polite workers”. We have already stipulated that the main task of the new site is to talk about the brand experience, and the realization that the current content absolutely does not fit into this task was a blow below the belt. Therefore, it was necessary to allocate funds for editing.

Content models are easy to duplicate.

Waterfall development has lost its position as the best way to develop content, as opposed to design and code development, so text editing often leads to changes in content models. I can divide one large field into two small ones, or writers can find a place where I missed an important part of the content. Optimization of models is considered an obligatory part of the process.

In projects in which text editing was performed in the first place, I often encounter the fact that perfectly written text simply has no place in the model. In the course of structuring information, we can combine two pages into one, or use the same description in three places, and thus the efforts of editors who were spent on changing such text are simply discarded before they even see the light. This is discouraging, and may lead content creators to decide that I don’t value their time or their work at all.