How a Single Page Contains the Whole World of Brand Content

We often say this: “Nothing tests whether you have your brand figured out better than the process of designing your brand’s core website.”

People are rightfully distracted by the craft and magic of designing and coding things on the web. But information is what drives it all; every company and brand is constructed of topics, messages, data, and impressions, all looking for an online destination to connect with an audience.

Deciding what “buckets” of content a sitemap and design affords, and then filling them, will test you across the entire spectrum of your business’s value proposition.

That’s because “content” isn’t just something that goes into a bucket. It’s pretty much why the bucket exists.

If you dissect a single page, you'll find it needs to contain just about everything you need to know about your brand:

Look at the anatomy of almost any website’s home page. From the highest-level brand concept, to the most granular of utilitarian language, that single page may well display every conceivable kind of commercial content and copy you could use to communicate your company. What’s more, the information architecture that determined how it’s patterned, organized, and even how the database behind it manages updates, all comes from a careful understanding of the information your brand needs to convey.

So take a look at a simple wireframe of a web page. The next time you visit a brand website, or undertake the creation of your own, you’ll see what a world of content thinking it really requires.