Content strategy for developer-built websites

How much of your website is still running on placeholder text? I build websites for a living, and the single most common reason a project stalls isn't a technical problem, it's content. The design is approved, the components are built, the CMS is ready, and then we wait. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for months. Because nobody planned what was actually going to go on the pages.

The content gap

Developers and designers tend to work with placeholder text. Lorem ipsum, or a rough approximation of what the real content might say. The assumption is that the client will provide the real content once the site is built. But content isn't a drop-in replacement for placeholders. Real content has different lengths, different structures, and different requirements than what was assumed during design. A hero section designed for a six-word headline doesn't work when the actual headline is fifteen words. A case study grid designed for six items looks odd when there are only two.

This is a planning failure, not a content failure. The content strategy should be defined before design starts, not after development ends.

What content strategy means in practice

For a typical business website, content strategy answers three questions: What pages do you need? What does each page need to communicate? And what's the content model, the structure of each content type?

The page inventory comes from your business goals and your SEO research. If you're a consultancy, you probably need service pages, case studies, a blog, and some trust-building pages (about, team, testimonials). The specifics depend on your industry, your audience, and what your competitors are doing.

The messaging for each page should be defined in a content brief, a document that specifies the purpose of the page, the key messages, the target audience, and the desired action. This doesn't have to be elaborate. A single paragraph per page is enough to guide whoever's writing the content.

The content model is where developers and content strategists need to collaborate. A blog post in your CMS isn't just a title and a body of text. It's a title, a slug, an excerpt, a featured image, a category, tags, an author, a published date, and a body that probably contains headings, images, code blocks, and callouts. Defining this structure upfront means the CMS is built to support the content rather than constraining it.

Write content in parallel with development

The most effective approach I've found is running content creation in parallel with development. While I'm building components and templates, the client (or their copywriter) is writing content against the agreed content briefs. Draft content goes into the CMS as soon as the schemas are ready, which means I can test with real content rather than placeholders. By the time development is complete, the content is there, reviewed, edited, and ready.

This requires someone to own the content process on the client side. If nobody is responsible for content, it won't happen on time. We flag this in every project kickoff and offer to recommend freelance copywriters if the client doesn't have one.

Don't forget ongoing content

A blog that launches with eight posts and then goes silent for six months is worse than not having a blog at all. If you're going to commit to content, commit to a realistic publishing frequency. Once a month is fine. Once a week is ambitious for most small businesses. Whatever you choose, consistency matters more than volume.

If you're planning a new site and want to get the content strategy right from the start, I can help with that. Get in touch.