Should You Have Content or Design First? Should the design complement your content, or should the content compliment the design?

While hiring an agency to make the official website for your startup, the question arises on the order of priorities of events. Sure, if you're a technology guy with advance knowledge of coding, programming or web designing then you'd be working the build yourself, but not many entrepreneurs have the luxury of that knowledge. Either way, the options in designing are almost unlimited today – from swirly animations, smooth java, imbedded flash plug-ins and parallax scrolling, the use of white space making everything seem smarter and customized fonts and shades – among other magic that gives your website the wow factor.

But even a design as brilliantly simple as Apple's homepage might be useless if the content doesn't reciprocate the coolness. If design allures, content makes sure the viewer stays around. Here's why you should be investing equally if not more into the content as well:

Design is expensive

If you start off with designing without content in your hand, you can end up costing a fortune because the design will be vast and artistic, not catered to your content or target audience as such. Sure, it might look fabulous, but cost wise may not be economical. Who knows if your content is a lot and that actually leaves little room for artsy filters and distractions? Alternatively, what if the design is too simple but your content is minimal and was depending on your design to match up the space?

Content will be haphazard with the design already in hand

So many designing software's, agencies and designers themselves will jump the wagon in selecting a template or a pattern for you right at the beginning. This puts content writers in a tight spota s they have to make a pattern and swirl their content according to the templates and categories designed in the website, which is bad for business.

Everyone clueless

Not only does the design team have no clue how to make the best design because they don't know the content, but the content team also does not know how to write to fit the design. It's best if content takes the head start because spinning the design based on the content with be easier, and more appealing.

Summary

If you want to focus on a website that's so beautiful that it hooks the viewer to stay longer and click more, be sure to fit the content into the design. In a perfect scenario, the content teams will discuss with the designers over the best thing to do.

What is the order of events in your team? Does the design follow the content or does the content follow the design? Let us know in the comments on our official Facebook page, Entrepreneur India