When it comes time to develop a new website, companies and organizations spend a lot of time agonizing over what the site should be like. They consider all sorts of different designs and spend hours trying to get the functionality exactly where they want it. They make list after list of possible pages.
And then, they just slap some content in place.
Fact is, the important visitors who are coming to your website are doing so because you have some kind of information they need. They aren’t stopping by because you chose the red background or decided to do something jazzy with Java. Those elements may enhance their visit and help motivate them to do what you want, but they arrived at your site because they wanted to know something.
Your content is the most important part of your site, and it deserves at least as much — if not more — attention and time as your site’s other elements. But as web development as grown, most sites are driven either by designers who want websites to be attractive or developers who want them to be able to do cool things. Most representatives of both groups consider content to be necessary evil that’s just not important.
Think of the sites that are most useful to you, and ask yourself why. Odds are that it’s because you can discover what you need to know, and there’s enough information to satisfy you. So when it comes time to develop your own site, keep that simple fact in mind.