As mentioned, part of the planning stage is providing content. The importance of providing content before any physical design takes place cannot be stressed enough.

Without the content, it’s impossible to tell whether a design would be appropriate for your needs and from experience, content always ends up getting pigeon-holed in to the site, and you end up fitting the content around the design. If the content for one page is 300 words, that’s going to look radically different to a page that has 3000 words.

Being prepared with the right content ultimately saves you time, and more importantly, money, as there’s no dragged out costs to refactor a design that hasn’t been suitable for the Lorem Ipsum text in a design.

Always design around the content, not the other way around.

By using your content as the basis for the design, you can guarantee you’ll create a unique identity on the web, as no one else will have the same content and as such, no two designs should look alike. Follow this simple practice, and you’re sure to stand out in a crowd.