Acclaimed British web designer Paul Boag, creative director of the firm Headscape, writes about a funny phenomenon: how often companies redo their websites, spending lots on design and development, and all but overlook content. The headlines, the text. Funny, isn’t it. Unless you’re paying the bill and not getting the payoff. He writes, in part:

Next time you redesign your website don’t think it is enough just to employ a web design agency. You also need to consider your own responsibilities. … Ask any web designer and they will tell you that the single biggest point of weakness in any redesign project is late delivery of content. As a website owner it is easy to forget that although your web designer can create you a new website they cannot populate it with content.

Rewriting all of the content on your existing site is a major undertaking and without adequate resources it will simply not happen. What happens instead is that content is copied and pasted from your website, printed material or any other ad hoc source that can be found. This not only leads to a horrible Frankenstein mix of content, it also makes relaunching the website pointless.

Read the rest of his very interesting post here. I’m such a fan . . . gush! And I especially like the emphasis he puts on content, since we consider it our strong suit at Lennox: thinking through, organizing and writing the content that really works for clients and for our own projects.