If your company’s website uses a content management system, you probably use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to create and modify content on the site. Many WYSIWYG editors are very powerful, but with power comes responsibility, and this responsibility is often ignored by CMS end users, who try to do too much with design and style when editing content. Keeping the focus on your content, not excessive formatting, will ultimately keep your website looking professional and deliver a stronger message to your audience.
Here are some simple rules to follow to make sure your content stays consistent with the overall design of your website:
1. Use bold sparingly for optimal impact
The purpose of bolding a word or phrase is to create emphasis, and overusing bold is not only unsightly, but is also counterproductive. Bolding an entire paragraph, or worse yet, an entire page, diminishes its emphasis as there is no other content around it to create contrast. Instead, bold key words and phrases (only) to give your highlighted points the impact they deserve.
2. Just say “no” to Microsoft Office clip art
With a few exceptions, the clip art library included with Microsoft Office is incredibly dated and will do nothing to improve the visual appeal of a web page. Most of the pieces of art in the library are left over from the 90s, and the last thing you want your website to resemble is the 1990s. Using quality, current imagery to illustrate concepts in your content is a good thing, so try iStockphoto.com for a low-cost, modern alternative to the Office clip art library.
3. Don’t change the body text font
Your web designer (hopefully) set a default body text font for your entire website. Using the default typeface will keep your site looking consistent from page to page, and provide a much more professional look to your company’s web presence.
4. Maintain your website’s color palette
Your organization probably has a style guide, or at the very least a set of corporate colors, which were used to design your website. To keep your web content looking clean, and to stay consistent with your business’ image, don’t arbitrarily add other colors to content, and don’t use different colors for body text.
5. Use heading tags appropriately
HTML (the language your CMS outputs so your web pages can be read by web browsers), includes six heading tags: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6. Most WYSIWYG editors allow you to use these heading tags in your content. Generally, text in an H1 tag will be the largest (as it is the page’s primary heading text), H2 will be the next largest (as H2 tags are used for secondary headings within the page), and so on. Using H2 tags for secondary headings and H3 tags for tertiary headings will make visual sense to your reader, and will segment your content for proper emphasis.
Regal Creative specializes in producing well-designed, effective content management systems powered by open source technology such as Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal. If you are interested in building or updating a CMS for your business, please contact us.
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