Content is Hard
Both my colleagues and I have spoken before about how content really is the most important aspect of a website, one that should be discussed and understood before any designs are done. But frequently content is the very last thing to be dealt with. Why?
Put simply, creating content is hard. Just how hard is something that gets frequently underestimated. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which I will discuss below.
One reason is that many people no longer write often enough to be able to create written content quickly, so what they initially think will take an hour actually takes half a day. As a result, completing all of the content needed takes far longer than anticipated, and the quality starts to suffer as they rush to complete it on time.
Related to this is the fact that writing content which looks and sounds professional is a skill that takes a lot of time to develop - time which few people have to spare. Yet this is a very important skill, as content which doesn't look professionally written will be instantly noticed by users, even if it is just on a subconscious level; poorly written content can also cause problems with search engines, and prevent visitors from returning or becoming customers.
Another problem is that identifying what you need to write about (as opposed to what you might want to write about) is often very difficult, and it is all to easy to forget some of the most important or obvious content whilst concentrating on the other stuff. Once the site is live, you also need to come up with fresh content on a regular basis, ideally without repeating yourself, all the while maintaining the same standards as the rest of the site.
So what's the solution to these problems? The closest thing to a silver bullet is to hire a copywriter to provide the content for you; however if you have specific technical knowledge in your field that needs to be included this can cause other issues. In the end, you have to be prepared to take much longer than you originally thought to prepare your content, and to be willing to take the time needed to get your content right first time.