Web content is the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations. Now if you're reading this, you're probably researching our ability to deliver to you, a potential customer, the website that you 'need.'
In Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville write, "We define content broadly as 'the stuff in your Web site.' This may include documents, data, applications, e-services, images, audio and video files, personal web pages, archived e-mail messages, and more. And we include future stuff as well as present stuff.
That was well said and not too technical at all.
Now there are several types of websites you may be looking at, so, let's see what's available.
- Blogs are a type of website that contain mainly web pages authored in html. Millions of people use blogs online; a blog is now the new "home page", that is, a place where a persona can reveal personal information, and/or build a concept as to who this persona is. the core of a blog is the fact that it is written by a "person" and that person reveals information from her/his perspective.
- Search engine sites are composed mainly of html content, but also has a typically structured approach to revealing information. A search engine results page (SERP) displays a heading, usually the name of the search engine, and then a list of websites and their addresses. What is being listed are the results from a query that may be defined as keywords. The results page lists webpages that are connected in some way with those keywords used in the query. Most every business that has a websites uses this format.
- Discussion boards are sites composed of "textual" content organized by html or some variation that can be viewed in a web browser. The driving mechanism of a discussion board is the fact that users are registered and once registered can write posts. Often a discussion board is made up of posts asking some type of question to which other users may provide answers to those questions.
- E commerce sites are largely composed of textual material and embedded with graphics displaying a picture of the item(s) for sale. However, there are extremely few sites that are composed page-by-page using some variant of HTML. Generally, webpages are composed as they are being served from a database to a customer using a web browser. However, the user sees the mainly text document arriving as a webpage to be viewed in a web browser. E commerce sites are usually organized by software we identify as a "shopping cart."
No matter which site you need, don't forget, 'Content' is king! Text content is particularly important for search engine placement. Without original text content, most search engines will be unable to match search terms to the content of a site.
CMS or Content Management System - Organizing your content through a system (or tool) through the use of an administrator. content needs organization in such a manner to provide the reader (browser) with an overall "customer experience" that is easy to use, navigates with ease, website can fulfill the role assigned to it by the business, that is, to sell to customers, or to market products and services, or to inform customers of it's intent.
So, the best way to explain it, we uncover your needs, work with you to mold it into shape and deliver a site that gives your customers what they need.