Content Strategy Drives Digital Interactions

Bad apps abound. Ever struggle to find help or the right contact information? Regularly wander through a maze of words or waste precious time trying to understand what actions you can take? Chances are that poor content strategy is to blame. 

Apps are downloaded for a specific (usually short-term) purpose. Day-one retention rates, even for top e-commerce apps like Amazon and Etsy, hover around 35%—that’s less than half of users—and those numbers plummet to less than 10% after one month of use. If you want users to keep your app around, you need a solid plan for guiding their interactions and ensuring they can complete their tasks with zero roadblocks or frustrations.

Content Strategy is Needed at Every Stage

First, let's clarify what we mean when we say content strategy. We're not talking about blogs, social media posts, or press releases. We’re not talking about simply hiring a copywriter or throwing in some words at the end of development, after the “real” work has been done.

Every single element of your app, every bit of content, needs a purpose and a plan. Content strategy is the discipline that makes this happen. It is the “why” behind all content decisions. Content strategists optimize every piece of content so that it’s digestible, actionable, and valuable to users. This requires a strategic focus—on words, images, videos, documents, forms, everything that drives online interactions.

Good content strategy helps turn your app into the thing it should be to meet core business and user needs—not just what internal stakeholders say your app should be or what your developers can make happen. For this reason, content strategy should be a key part of your product development process, at every touchpoint. 

Early App Planning & User Research

Apps tend to start as abstract ideas around potential functionality—like a workout program or a dating network. But eventually you’ll need to deliver real content to real people, who will bring all their demands and flaws and frustrations with them. You need to strategize content early.

An early focus on content strategy ensures you’re designing an effective experience well before the first pixel is ever placed. Provided they’re invited to the conversation early enough, content strategists can help you understand how goals and objectives translate to content on the screen and drive crucial interactions.

Content should also be determined by your user research efforts. (Not doing user research? Here's how you can start observing real users, right now.) Content strategists should participate in user research. They need to understand user needs and pain points before they can hope to mitigate them. They need to understand what’s helpful or not helpful before they can design a welcoming experience. And they need to understand users before they can speak their language. 

Getting Into the App

Getting into an app—whether signing up, logging in, following a tutorial, or just making sense of dashboards or landing screens—is one of the most important interactions a user will have. Much like the first three seconds on a website, their experience here will shape their perception of how easy or how hard it is to do business with you.

Content strategy is the secret to crafting a thoughtful, seamless onboarding process. Words dominate these screens, either through explicit messaging or microcopy. This can’t be left to lorem ipsum dolor, developer whims, or out-of-the-box solutions. You need someone with content expertise to craft concise, clear instructions; collect information in an efficient, secure way that garners trust; and offer help well before the user ever gets in trouble.

Navigation

Getting oriented in apps and finding one's way around is a basic, fundamental interaction. Nothing will destroy user confidence as quickly as inefficient, nonsensical, or outright inaccessible navigation. Words rule the entire experience, so content strategy must do the important work of making sure menus and links are instantly understandable. This means evaluating whether the words are correct, accurate, consistent, and properly prioritized. These small details can make or break your entire app experience.

Content Before Design and Development

If the Socratic ideal is for form to follow function, then design should follow content strategy. Yet many apps are designed—with layouts locked down and finalized—before content strategy is ever in the picture. This creates tediously long scrolls, broken layouts, awkward interactions, and general mayhem.

Plan around content types and content formatting needs early on. When content is ignored, it often ends up being poorly organized, incomplete, or just not optimized for how users read and act on small devices. What feels like a short paragraph on desktop can feel like a novel on mobile. Every word and every element must count.

Governance and Maintenance

If you plan on updating or regularly publishing content to your digital product, you’ll need content strategy input. Content strategists specialize in setting guidelines (governance) around how to effectively add or evolve product content. They make sure you’re creating the right content for the right audience at the right time. Essentially: if you plan on touching the app after it launches, no matter how lightly, you need a clear plan to ensure quality and consistency is maintained.

CS = Customer Satisfaction

The truth is, apps can’t succeed without a solid content strategy—implemented from the very beginning and propagated through every iteration and update. The first step to achieving this? Invest in content strategy experts. Integrate them directly into your team so they can offer early insight and expertise. Only then will you be able to build an experience that meets and even exceeds your user’s expectations.