Any digital experience is about having a conversation with the user. Dialogue includes words, tone, and even gestures. If we don't look at the content of the conversation first, how can we have a successful and engaging conversation with the user?

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In order to create the most practical and attention capturing interface, the content cannot be an afterthought.

Although placeholder text and images are often seen throughout the prototyping process, the actual content is usually entered only at the end of the prototyping process.

Using placeholder text is not a good idea, as lorem ipsum,  

• does not help you get the actual feedback you need for your design
• does not help you develop accurate prototypes for testing 
• does not lead to the development of actual solutions that can help users perform their tasks 
•  hinders your ability to develop solutions that achieve business goals.

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Let’s look at the example below to understand how deeply content can affect design decisions:

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The above images draw a very necessary insight- content plays a huge role in design. 

Content’s role can range from deciding;

A. Images: Well, if you are talking about horses, you can’t show cars! 

B. Typography: Content helps a designer sense the mood of the website. Eg: Using Times for “ Love Story in Bahamas” does not convey the same emotion as using Rancho “ Love Story in Bahamas “.  

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A designer can only think about the typography to be used when they have an idea of what emotion you want to bring to the forefront when users visit your website. 

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What do we actually mean by Content first approach?
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"Content-first design" is a way of using content to define design and design elements, not the other way around. It is common to see placeholder text and images during the prototyping process, and the actual content is only presented at the end. 

The problem here is that the fictitious content does not capture the context of what the design will be used for, causing problems when the product is used in nature.

The Dropbox UX writer, John Saito, suggests that the design and the writing are so close that the similarities between the two are easy to notice.

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The content-first approach is the difference between a carefully planned and budgeted digital experience and a delayed release that requires rework, rethinking, and additional budget requests.

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Can Webflow help you with the content first approach?...Yes!!
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For creating a Webflow CMS powered site the first step is to define a collection of content types. This can be defined by picking up various fields from the field types above.

These fields work independently of each other mostly, the user just needs to choose the content type according to the content and start putting the page together.

After using multi-element reference you will develop an understanding of why we emphasis on content strategy and planning in designing with webflow CMS.

It is not possible to refer to another collection until the first step has been executed.

Let me explain the above statement with an example, 

Say, you are building a movie review blog powered by webflow CMS. 

You are aware that the key component are the movies. 

Now, you may want to start your design by creating a "Movie Review" collection. So you create a collection, name it , and start selecting fields. Naturally, you start to think about fields based on the visual layout of a single blog post:

Image - Large, eye-catching close-ups of hero movie posters. 
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Image - A thumbnail version of the main image that is used to display in the blog index.

Plain Text - Used for article titles. You choose plain text for this field because you want the title to appear consistent and there is no style option on the CMS side. 
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Plain Text - For Movies, it will link to a page that lists all the movies for a review (and works as a category page) 

Here, you realize that you have to create a genre collection before you can complete your movie review collection.

This is perfectly fine-you can modify the collection at any time after you create it.

This might feel like additional effort. But the benefit is that you start to think about sites in terms of their small components (often called "modules" ) and the relationships between these elements.

If you follow a content first approach or are confused about it and need some guidance, please reach out to us.