It is tempting to start a website with pictures. We start with words, because the layout of a page should follow what it has to say, not the other way round.
The five questions
- What is this, in one plain sentence?
- Who is it for?
- Why choose it over the alternatives?
- What does it cost, or how does it work?
- What should I do next?
If a homepage answers those five questions clearly, the design has a job to do: make the answers easy to find and pleasant to read. If it does not, no amount of design will rescue it.
How we do it
We write a plain-text draft of every key page in the first week and review it with you before any visual design starts. Changing a sentence then takes seconds; changing a finished layout takes days.