Tips For A Content-Heavy Website

By Gavin Kilgallon on Monday, 2 December 2024

A content-heavy website needs to be planned carefully. They contain a lot of text-based content that visitors need to be able to search through to locate relevant information. Content-heavy websites are often associated with the news industry, universities with publications, and educational sources.

As a top-rated web design agency, we have worked with numerous content-heavy websites (hospital intranets, industry membership organisations, and industry support sites). We have extensive experience designing websites that make information retrieval a positive user experience. This article details how to structure a content-heavy website, the best practices and ideas for improving UX, and the mutual benefits it can bring.

Understand Your Website Visitors

It is essential to have a clear and coordinated direction for your content so visitors can find what they are looking for efficiently. By understanding your users and their needs, you can create content that is easy to locate and relevant to your target audience, which will, in turn, help improve user engagement.

SEO is another aspect to consider when planning your content strategy. To maximise your search engine exposure, it's essential to implement your website and URL structure, title tags, and H1 headings correctly.

Prioritise Content That Is Important

A website should always be about the user experience, allowing users to quickly achieve their objectives and leave with a positive impression of your website and brand. Prioritising content readers want will enable them to locate important information quickly, keep them engaged, and make them far more likely to convert.

How To Prioritise Content?

Some techniques that can be employed to prioritise content include:

Understand the website objectives and relate them to your audience's needs.
Use a content calendar to plan the content rollout and prioritise its creation across your team.
Look at your website analytics and what content and pages are most viewed. Software such as HotJar will also allow you to visualise how website visitors react to your content.
A/B testing allows you to compare different content versions and how users interact to determine which performs best.

Make Content User Friendly

Content needs to be presented in a user-friendly way so that website visitors can easily digest it. The following lists give various options the ID Studio team discusses with our clients in the planning phase of the website design and development process.

PDF Documents: Instead of presenting users with multiple pages of content on the screen, present it in a PDF so they can download and view it at their convenience.
Collapsable Or Tabbed Content: Hide information under a read more or tabbed section. This frees up the page from text and allows site visitors to decide the content they want to view.
Dynamic Content: Incorporate functionality that only displays information a user previously expressed an interest in.
Content Summaries: By providing a snippet of information summarising content, you can free up room on the webpage and save users time.
Essential Information: Make sure important information is easily accessible and doesn't need to be hunted for.
Anchors: Insert anchors in the text, allowing users to easily navigate between important sections within the content.

Search Functionality

Searches are a standard feature on content-heavy websites, and for good reason - they allow content to be located quickly and easily. They also give visitors control, allowing them to select the information they want to view and go directly to it.

ID Studio Search Functionality Checklist

It needs to be located in a prominent location.
Incorporate auto-suggesting to help users with their search.
Consider using AI to aid the accuracy of searches.
Create a user-friendly results page highlighting keywords and descriptions the user searched for.
Add filter functionality so that users can further refine their searches.
Encourage user feedback to help improve search functionality.

User-Friendly Design For Content

Embracing user-friendly content practices when designing a website will enhance the user experience and make locating information more natural and intuitive.

It is essential that content formatting follows a uniform pattern throughout the site design by considering the following:

Use clear headings and subheadings.
Incorporate white space so that visitors don't feel overwhelmed.
Incorporate bullet points and icons to break up the text and help readability.
Use easy-to-read fonts and colour schemes.
Make use of images and graphs. This can help keep their attention and break up heavy content.
The design must be responsive so that it renders correctly on mobile devices.

Final Thoughts

Some websites have a large amount of content, and there is no way to change that. Embrace the challenge and follow this guide so visitors can quickly and easily find what they want.

If you want to discuss your web design needs or how an existing website can be improved, contact the ID Studio team anytime to schedule a call.