Non-Line Blogging

Even if you consider yourself a bit of a wordsmith the intenet is a pretty unforgiving place and will not tolerate excessive words.  Make web pages "appear" easily laid out to guide people through the content, obsess about every one of your 95 characters in Google AdWords, and ensure that your email subject lines persuade in less than about 80 characters (and don't waste 18 of them with "October Newsletter" either!)

In case anybody else is grappling with the same problem this appropriately brief post gives you some inspiration from others who have tried...

I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.  Blaise Pascal

Omit Needless Words.  William Strunk 1918

Omit Needless Words.  Steve Krug 2000

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.  William Strunk

Get rid of half the words on each page, and then get rid of half of what's left  Steve Krug

In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.  Antoine de Saint Exupéry

So there.

Many years ago web portals crammed millions of buttons and banners onto their home pages and finding what you wanted was a little like a "Where's Wally" puzzle.  Happily some sites like Ryanair still seem to think we have 20 minutes free to find the link we're after...they may as well hide Wally in there to make it fun.

But Google changed all that with their minimalist home page.  Seth Godin in Purple Cow recounts how, in the early days, somebody kept emailing the Google web manager with the homepage word count every time Larry and Sergey added another button...some people care about your site.  Google created the perfect homepage based on the key "successful outcome" of getting people to search: 

• The search bar dominates by its location and size..check out Amazon's new "big" search bar to mimic this
  
• There is little other content to distract us, so we can find wally quickily and easily
  
• The cursor is winking accommodatingly in the search box when the page loads, making it ergonomically easier 

Anyway, just when we thought it would be good to remove the clutter from our home page we now have to do Web 2.0 design things or we're going to fall behind.  So now everybody is building sites with some of these key components:

• Icons or cartoon characters 
  
• Rounded edges for all images and boxes
  
• Shadows and/or reflections where at all possible
  
• Short sentences, simple words 
  
• Mid-Atlantic cool tone of voice - talk about "stuff" (Amazon had a "where's my stuff" button in 1998 so that's not new) 

So now, wherever you go in crowded, competitive markets every site is looking like every other. A quick whizz around the car insurance market and the layout, look and feel are all similar...they may even all be sharing the same "get a quote" button.

 

So, the insurance companies are not only aggregating their quote processes but they are also aggregating their interface design.  Don't get me wrong, this is miles nicer than the Where's Wally primary navigation of Ryanair and maybe those that don't simplfy their top level navigation just won't survive.  Google has forced a number of companies to enlarge their search bars and the Chrome Browser takes this even further with the address bar also acting as the search box...we'll see Microsoft follow suit at some stage.  

For several years I have been urging marketers to kick their dependence on "Moveable Type".  It was a great way to scale information dissemination in 1439 but the world has moved on.  Ironically it has been the publishers who have managed to seize the video content initiative.  Conservative organisations like the Telegraph have morphed into a CNN/BBC hybrid with loads of video content...and they have even cracked the monetisation with pre-roll forced viewing of ads. 

However, few sites have really optimised video/flash for their "successful outcome" journeys.  I was recently encouraging a hotel chain to do more engaging things than "download sample menu PDF" on their site, or think of alternatives to call-out boxes with short text testimonials;  by the end of the session we'd identified 20 different "rich media" opportunities to bring their hotels to life including...

• Video interview with the head chef
• Virtual tours of the gardens - season by season
• "Vox Pop" testimonials recorded before people leave
• Welcome message from Hotel Manager

I have a couple of clients who have even dismissed my over-cautious recommendations about "testing" text versus "rich media" because they know that the video/audio stuff is the right thing to do (with search-optimised text transcripts alongside!).  So, why wait?  Today's digital project for you...what's on my web site that would be more successful if it were in audio/video format and how cheap and quick would it be to execute (get your teenage kids to do it for you..they are the video generation)?

I admire the efforts Salesforce.com have done with a flash presentation for each of their target personas delivered by the most appropriate person...it shows an understanding of the need to tune messages to decision makers and that a personal touch is engaging...although it may be a little too cheezy for some puritan British prospects. 

I have been a fan of MSN's Bring The Love Back campaign and noticed this morning that they have released the next video instalment.  The idea is to promote take-up of integrated marketing by having a giggle at marketers who don't get it..."I did try and look at that Web 2 dot zero stuff you told me about but I just couldn't find the exact URL"

You'll have to look at the first video to get the point of the second one.  So MSN are getting across a complex business proposition (don't be a stupid marketer...get to know and use digital marketing, preferably with us not Google!?) through video.  Now who'd have thought that likely a couple of years ago.

Way back in April 1999 the "Cluetrain Manifesto" nailed the concept of honesty and transparency in on-line copy, and probably predicted the easy-going,  tone of voice that many sites are falling into... 

"Markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do."

 

Now, whilst many sites have their own tone of voice guidelines, it doesn't seem to have reached the twilight world of their error messages.  Bad error messages seem to have a few things in common:

• They pop up on the critical paths where a gentle touch is vital (email sign-up, shopping carts)
• They are in red
• THEY ARE SHOUTING AT YOU IN CAPITALS
• They use the inaccessible language of legal professionals ("...that requires correction??")
• You are being told off
• You feel stupid and humiliated

Most of the time it's not even an error, for goodness sake.  It's because the web site was not clear enough in its instructions, or its bad navigation...that's an "oversight message" or an "I'm terribly sorry we've confused you" message.

Here is my all-time favourite.  It's for a car manufacturer that really should know better. 

 

 

It's in the middle of a key process (brochure request) and it must be doing more harm than good.  I'd love to know if anybody in the marketing team has EVER looked at the drop off point for this page.  I'd love to know if anybody has ever done the maths on the "cost per rude error message" affecting sales per year.  Here's my calculation based on the assumption that 1 in 20 people who get a brochure take a test drive and 1 in3 of them buy a new car (a reasonable industry assumption)...

• 1,000 Visitors per week start process
• 10% leave site because you annoyed them
• That's 100 losses a week
• Or 5,200 visitors a year
• Which is 260 test drives
• And 86 car sales
• At £12,000
• Cost of Rude Error Message £1,032,000 a year
• Time to correct rude error message - 30 seconds

Now, how about that for a quick, big win?

Presented at Aberystwyth University last week on a Welsh Assembly programme for graduates looking to start up new business.  Aim of the workshop was to give some practical advice on how the web can support them and it struck me how complicated we make all this interweb marketing stuff.

Download it from http://www.nonlinemarketing.com/html/downloads.html

How many big companies with teams of business anaylsts and web designers can really strip their business down to the simple things: 

Work out your allowable cost per sale - without that you should not be touching Google AdWords or Affiliate programmes.
Focus on a few key succesful outcomes - as likely to be "ring this number" or "print out this page and pop in and see us" as much as "click here to visit our micro-site". 
Create persausive web sites - get rid of the clutter, use great photos and think about audio and video content that gives you an honesty and transparency.

OK, so I also told them to know and love Google, to play around with social media and think about testing and measuring, but the key was to get them to do the basics well.  And on my travels I came across simple sites doing things really well.

Persuasion with good photograpy and simple colour palate...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And for the BtoB world, how about Persuasion by being simple, clear and honest...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it, by paring back our cluttered sites we can probably deliver a more pleasant, engaging experience.  Sites like www.thomson.co.uk  and www.innocentdrinks.co.uk have already done it.  So now we all have to catch up with them.

Less is more and all that.