July 9, 2005
Don't Write Like An Idiot
Writing with a clear and simple style is critical to the success of your website, because online visitors have to quickly understand that your site/page solves their problem, or they leave.
To help you chase the corporate-speak out of your online (and offline) vocabulary, there's new book: Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.
Judging by the web site and blog it looks like the authors lead by example and have found plenty of candidates for the gobbledy-gook hall of fame, such as this:
"By merging data from SAP and non-SAP applications with business intelligence queries, SAP Analytics eliminate disparate islands of data and seamlessly combine transactional, analytic and collaborative steps across multiple business functions, departments and even organizational boundaries."
Even better, they have developed an online application that rates your writing (or any sample you paste in) and offers an instant critique. Copy some text from your web site and go see how it rates. Here's how an earlier entry on this blog fared:
Bull Diagnosis: Diagnosis: Congratulations - you rely upon standard words to explain concepts. Most concepts will be clear and understood. Keep clean.Flesch Diagnosis: Diagnosis: Mostly clear, with some unnecessarily long words and sentences. You get to the point, although with an occasional detour. Most educated readers will navigate the text with no difficulty. Longer words and sentences appear occasionally.
October 24, 2004
Better Than Fedex
Mark Cuban blogs about how to get his attention, at least in terms of attracting his investment dollars. It's another strange yet interesting post from 'The Benefactor', and winds up with a simple suggestion:
What gets my attention ? Send me an email with a link to a website. I almost always will take the 10 seconds to link to that website and check it out.The website should have everything and everything someone would want to know about your business and how it works. If i think its a great idea, I will get back to you. I don't care if its on a free hosting site. I don't care about the URL. I care about the substance of the site.
How much attention would you put into the clarity and effectiveness of your web site if your entire business depended on it? Well guess what - it does.
Your visitors may not have a billion dollars, but whether they've thought about it deliberately or not I bet they take the same approach Cuban does; they're willing to give you a few seconds to check it out. Is your site ready?
July 19, 2004
Baby Knows Best
Another great post at Signal-vs-Noise praising the web site CD Baby for the tone and style of their on-site communications. (And their follow up emails, if you read the comments.)
It's a good case study and worth thinking about in terms of your own web site. While some of the silly stuff might not be right for everyone, the idea of speaking more directly, personally, and conversationally could help a lot of web sites that are now filled with boring, impersonal, and rather stilted 'brochure copy'.
May 10, 2004
That's Nice
Why do so many sites announced that they're new, or updated? Does this information help me in any way? Are they letting me know that the old one was really lousy and I'm lucky I didn't show up back then? Should I buy something because they're trying so hard? What is the point of sharing this information?
May 5, 2004
Your Web Site Isn't Finished
Usability guru Jakob Nielson suggested last week that B2B web sites create 'advocacy kits' to help customers arm themselves with the information necessary to convince the decision makers who must actually 'sign off' on these types of purchases. His point is that there are different types of people who might need different types of info to become confident or convinced enough to pull the trigger - product photos, white paper, press reviews, slide shows, demos, etc - and the web site should provide each of these supporting materials so the shopper can get the necessary approvals and the web site can 'get the sale'.
His general point - that your web site is not complete until it provides a full range of product and sales information - applies to anyone selling a product or service online, not just B2B sites. There are many reasons for this, but I think the main one is that web site development is considered a 'project' that gets a start date and end date and budget. Sites get built within these finite resource limits and then are considered 'done' until it's time for a major overhaul. But the reality of deadlines and budget limitations is that necessary trade-offs are made, shortcuts are taken, and only so much can get done.
Once the site is 'launched' its treated like a brochure that came back from the printer. That's what we've got until we do it again. Meanwhile, every day prospects come and go (just look at your log files or analytics) because the vast majority of them don't get enough information, aren't convinced, or worse just can't find or understand the material you are presenting.
Marketers need to take a critical look at their online sales materials and ask themselves: Is this everything I've got to say about that product (or service) to help a potential customer make their buying decision? And is what's there presented in the best and most understandable manner. If it isn't - and I think most marketers would probably say that only a small percentage of what they'd like to say to a prospect is included on their site - then a plan to iteratively improve the web site with more and better information and materials needs to be put in place. Time and money needs to be allocated on an ongoing basis until the web site does its job, which is to take as many potential customers as possible as far as possible through the sales cycle and right through purchase.
All of us know from our own online shopping experience, that more often than not you find a product or service of interest and do not find as much information as you'd like to have before purchasing. So we all wind up going back to Google, or visiting the manufacturers site, or looking up reviews in magazines or in user forums, and more often than not by this time we've either forgotten where we originally saw the product or stumbled on another seller that is either better or more convenient or just happens to be the there at the time that we're ready to buy.
Your site should be your ultimate sales person. The one that knows everything, and knows how to talk to just about anyone. The one that works 24/7. The one that closes more deals than anyone else. It can be, but just like the flesh-and-blood equivalent, it needs ongoing training and the best possible support materials or it just can't do the job you want it to do.
Unfortunately too many sites are treated like their human sales counterparts - they're barely educated about the products, not given enough or the right kind of sales materials, and then sent out there and expected to make sales. And just like in the real world, the result is a lot of missed opportunities.
Original Nielson link found via Brain Brew
April 26, 2004
Bad Form: Links That Lie
Just a little pet peeve: If you want to provide a link to send mail (via mailto:me@myplace.com), label the link 'Email Us' or something similarly clear. Don't label the link Contact Us.
I click on 'Contact Us' to find out where you are (usually) or maybe to decide if I want to call, write, email, or fax. In other words, I expect a web page with contact information, not to be thrown into my email software. It's not what I expected or wanted, and it's sort of jarring to be out of the browser unexpectedly.
This is just one of several regularly mis-labelled links. So this post is the first in a series....