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While I'm not entirely sure if "Brian" is real, it's a very funny reminder that not everyone wants to participate in this crowdsourcing thing. (Hat tip to Johnnie Moore.)
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Over at When Bad Websites Happen to Good People, today’s tip is all about website speed. In this tip, our 8th, you’ll find some of the usual causes of slow sites, and some suggestions to speed up your site.
But why is speed so critical to website success? Because, according to Forrester Consulting, two seconds is new acceptable norm for online shoppers. Customer expectations can be brutal.
- 47 percent of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and,
- 40 percent of consumers would abandon a site if it took more than three seconds to load
While this research is aimed at online shoppers, I would go out on a limb and say the same applies to B2B sites. Let’s face it, humans are an impatient bunch. As everything becomes instant, speed is crucial.
As much as it is up to designers to make sure a website loads quickly, it’s up to online copywriters to ensure content is web-friendly, and equally as important, human-friendly. I’ve discussed some of the differences between writing for the web and writing for print publications previously with suggestions on creating web-friendly text.
However, human-friendly content, or brand voice, is not often discussed in the conversion process. But brand voice plays a big role in instant connection and engagement.
Brand Language Influences Online Behaviour
Earlier this year, CDA (Content Delivery &Analysis) conducted a study to better understand the online linguistic processes and pathways that consumers take when they want to find things online. Among some of the CDA’s key findings:
- Language that people appear to respond to most favourably when they finally engage with a website is language that more closely resembles their natural language of intent – less mechanical and more human.
- Language that engages people on web pages is not the same as the language that forms the pathways to a site.
- There seems to be a direct correlation between what language a website uses and how a visitor feels. In many cases participants are put off by what they find because it is not in line with their previously articulated expectations and / or requirements. The language that brands employ on websites can often be too formal (technical, un-human, productised) – and this can alienate people.
So why does this stifling, consumer-inhibiting business formality exist? I’m not entirely sure, but I think that many companies confuse business jargon with professionalism.
Brand Voice Makes Connections
You only have a few seconds to captivate. A strong human brand voice has a realness and authenticity that shines through and connects with remarkable speed and effectiveness.
Brand voice goes well beyond word choice. It considers intent, framing, syntax – it’s a whole semantics smorgasbord! It takes thoughtful reflection to pin down not only what to say, but how to say it. But the return is incredible, a clear voice that is 100% YOU cuts through the same-old,-same-old of a noisy marketplace.
In a lightning-fast digital world, that’s invaluable.
As a copywriter, you can imagine that I don’t really appreciate the phrase “people don’t read on the Web” being bandied about too much. Profession aside, it’s just not true.
In the later half of 2006, the Poynter Institute conducted an eye-tracking study to see how 582 people in four U.S. cities viewed their hometown newspapers (both broadsheets and tabloid format) and Web sites. That study indicated that people may read more of an article on the Web than in print, much to the delight of online publishers and bloggers everywhere.
Participants were given 90 minutes to read the newspaper or Web site as they normally would. The study examined how print and online readers navigate through the paper or the Web, how much do people read and how much readers remember.
The result were this:
- Online participants read an average of 77 percent of story text they chose to read.
- Broadsheet participants read an average of 62 percent of stories they selected.
- Tabloid participants read an average of 57 percent.
People DO read on the Web.
Quite a bit actually. But here’s the caveat: It’s just not in the same way that you’d curl up with a good book.
Well-known Web usability expert Jakob Niesen talks about the online F-factor. F stands for fast and also mimics the horizontal and vertical scanning patterns of online readers. People have learned to scan web pages at lightning-bolt speeds in order to pinpoint key information or quickly determine if a web page is relevant to their query.
What does this mean for online writers toiling over each and every precious word? It means writing differently for the Web in key areas:
Get to the point – Put the most important information first.
Use of headings and subheads – Your headings and subheads are a great way to divide up information as well as provide strong keyword prompts about that the next section may cover.
Start with keywords – Because readers scan down the left-hand side of the text upon initial viewing, make sure that information-carrying words come first.
Break up long paragraphs – Facilitate scanning by varying paragraph length and breaking up very long paragraphs into more digestible chunks of text.
Please don't do this, in real life or online! Keyword stuffing turns people off. Period.
Thanks to @zoonini (The amazing Kathryn of Zoonini Web Services) for the graphic design help! We're on a mission to save good people from bad websites, stay tuned for our upcoming launch of When Bad Websites Happen to Good People.
1.) Well, as everyone knows it was April Fools’ Day this week, and those pranksters at Google were once again in top form. They created CADIE, an artifical intelligence tasked-array system that worked on making the user experience more pleasurable by making web pages like this as well as creating Google Auto Pilot for Gmail. Google also introduced Brain Search. (But, what scares me is I don’t think that’s too farfetched!)
2.) Not to be outdone, the Guardian announced it was switching from print and would be published exclusively through Twitter. Experts say “any story can be told in 140 characters.”
3.) Despite the rather annoying pop-up at SEObook, this interview with Mike Grehan is well worth the read, filled with many, many insights about the future of search. Download the white paper here.
4.) Copyblogger has a piece by Sherice Jacob that provides tips on How the Right Words Help You Sell Better.
5.) Twitter pal Mark Goren has some handy tips on how to filter out some of the noise and allow top content to come to you.
6.) Listen up, because here is some invaluable advice. Don’t miss 8 Great Content Marketing Takeaways from 2009 Custom Content Conference.
7.) That clever and talented social media guy (and fantastic photographer) CC Chapman put out a free white paper called About Face, which provides the inside scoop on Facebook pages.
8.) If you love something, set it free! Maggie Fox from Social Media Group and Scott Monty from Ford put together a compelling Slideshare presentation. It’s definitely got me thinking about how I can create something that people want to share. (Oh, where is that cloning machine??)
9.) Steve Rubel interviews Jeff Jarvis about his new book What Would Google Do?
10.) I missed this really fascinating read from Brainstorm’s Ed Illig a while back, but couldn’t stop thinking about it this week. It’s an amazing story of how a former opera star rebranded himself after vocal chord surgery changed his singing voice. It also touches on how he used the Internet to propel his new career forward.
Friday Fun
All you wordies out there, try the Marketing Profs challenge. Come up with a word that describes “A customer who rants at you without justifiable reason.” At the time of this post, “Frustomer” was leading.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONTREAL, April 1, 2009 – Today, A.C. Riley Communications was certified as a licensed LOLspeak copywriting firm, by the International Institute of LOLcats. A.C. Riley Communications is the first in North America to be fully authorized.
“Wez spekin the LOLspeak for the corporatage cumminications, Im in ur corner, writin ur copyz.” said A. Charlotte Riley, president of A.C. Riley Communications. “We plan to breakthroughs the “I can has cheezburger barrier” for LOLspeak to be jumpin the sharkz and swimmings in the mainstream”
Riley contents that applying a “human” voice to corporate communications is not only one-dimensional, but also biased, saying “Kitties got teh feelin too. It can’t be all humanz, humanz, humanz, wot?”
Instead, Riley is urging businesses and organizations to give up the “best-of-breed corporatespeak that be representin the faceless face of biz.”
“If my bizniz was farking importants to them, I be spekin to a for reals person. But that’s wot theys say to fools people into believings that they care about you. The future is LOLspeak. It be reals. FTW!” Riley stated exuberantly during an interview.
About A.C. Riley Communications
A.C. Riley Communications is a Montreal-based communications firm that specializes in content analysis and development, optimized copywriting and marketing collaterals. It is the first company in North American to be officially sanctioned by the International Institute of LOLcats for Intertubes and Outertubes copywriting.
Yesterday I wrote an open letter to one of my favourite restaurants about site usability and design and how a poor site affects online experience and brand. Today I thought I would focus on the content side of things- how to determine what people really want to see.Let’s go out on a limb here and say there are two types of people who are your main audience:
1.) People who haven’t yet been to your restaurant.
2.) Your regular customers.
What sort of content would be necessary for people who have not yet tried your restaurant?
Location and Hours
This should be a no-brainer, but it is amazing how many restaurants don’t include their contact information or have it hidden away where it is hard to find. Information should include telephone, email, and address. You might also provide reservation details here too. Google Maps are a great way to help people find your restaurant. Hours of operation are also very important - I don’t want to show up at 3:00 p.m. for a late lunch to discover the restaurant is closed until the 5:00 p.m. dinner service.
Cuisine
Tell me quickly what type of restaurant you are. Thai? Fusion? Upscale? Casual? Family? These sorts of words are great for people (and search engines). Make yourself findable for the folks who are searching for “Indian restaurant near Queen West” or “Wine bar in the financial district Toronto." Also, from a user point of view, it makes it easy to quickly get a picture of the type of cuisine and restaurant I can expect.
Menu
As a foodie, I want to see what sort of culinary options I have, and as a consumer, I’d like to know the price range. Make it easy to read online, as well as to print or download.
Food & Interior Photos
Help me familiarize myself with your establishment. Give me a glimpse of the sort of ambiance and atmosphere I might expect. While some restaurants create a gallery -and that’s great- it is not necessary, but do have nice professional photos throughout the site.
Reviews
If there are food critic reviews or user-generated reviews, these should be included. While it’s nice to hear that you use local seasonal ingredients, I’d love third-party, unbiased confirmation that the food is good.
What sort of content would attract your existing clientele to visit your website on a regular basis?
- How about adding the daily specials to your homepage. (Or at least a prominent link/banner to daily specials.)
- If you are the type of restaurant that has take-away food, allow customers to order online.
- Does your restaurant offer special events – wine tastings, live music, etc., have a calendar or schedule.
- Remember that early April Fools’ prank – that Twitter was going to charge for “premium” services? The premium services included an expanded character limit, among other perks. Well, shortly there after, it looks like Twitter is indeed considering paid accounts. And, this week, Danny Sullivan noted that there is a way to extend your character limit, through SuperTweet. So, the prank is starting to look far less prankish!
- With the backlash against the phrase “social media expert”, Traci Armstrong at Three Minds at Organic delves into how to sift the wheat from the chaff in Is Social Media Today’s Snake Oil?
- So, did you turn your lights out last night for Earth Hour? To help promote awareness, SBS in Sydney installed eco-vinyl clad recycled cardboard tree-hugger figures in various city parks. And, Leo Burnett Sydney, one of three organizations, along with WWF and Fairfax Media, that conceived of Earth Hour, came up with the brilliantly simple tagline “Vote Earth”
- Frank Watson put together a thoughtful piece entitled Does Twitter Reflect a Change in How We Search? that looks at the need for social (or real-time) search and Twitter’s one big problem – the only option of sorting by latest comment.
- Complex site architecture can impede search engines from crawling a site. But, if you have a lot of information on your site, what’s the best way to organize it? SEOmoz has some excellent suggestions on how to flatten site architecture.
- Over at Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog, Jason Baer wonders if social media is creating a customer chasm, and says, “if the way you treat your customers within the social media sphere is inherently different than how you treat them elsewhere, you're playing with fire.”
- How I love this post by Mike Yanke: SEO Copywriting: Lure The ‘Bots - Don’t Become One. Read it.
- BL Ochman has put together some great tools to monitor your brand in social media. Don’t miss out on what people are saying about you or your company!
- Got a question about analytics? The go-to guy is Avinash Kaushik. Last week he turned to Twitter and asked people to submit their web analytic questions. Oh, how they did!!
- Étienne Garbugli of Kotsego notes some very simple, but often overlooked, ways of improving customer experience.
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