After a few Google web queries on the subject it became clear to me that I wasn’t about to find anything authentic.  Most of the top results were based on trip and vacation details, surf camps, surf shops and other services.  Well, that’s fair I guess, but it’s not what I wanted.  I wanted to hear from people, not companies.  Still, I figured that the shops might provide authentic information…

No such luck though.  Most of the sites I went to tended to use the same boilerplate copy that you see everywhere.  It’s not bad copy, certainly fits with conventional wisdom on web copywriting, but in most cases it lacked authenticity.  Could’ve been written by anybody, whether they’d been surfing or not.  I’ve dubbed it Robocopy… and again, it’s not bad copy by any stretch.  There’s no shortage of web experts who’ll tell you that this method is the most proven to create the opportunity for conversion.

And they could be right, but I don’t see it that way.  I think we have to look beyond the conversion to the people we’re having the conversation with.

If you’re interested, this is the formula for writing effective sales copy.

Introduction: Introduce yourself and your company, then spell out a key problem the visitor is experiencing while trying to identify with them on a personal level.  You might say something like,

Your widgets are important, they’re what makes your company function day to day!  When your widgets break it can cost you thousands of dollars in lost orders or production time, something you simply can’t afford in today’s struggling economic climate.  Tom’s Widgets carries thousands of widgets, and provides free overnight delivery of all standard and non-standard widgets around the world!

Elevator Pitch: Quickly explain the unique benefit your organization offers, something like:

Tom’s Widgets provides guaranteed overnight delivery on all widget orders.  We pride ourselves on providing excellent customer service and a vast array of widgets of all sizes, makes and models.

Closing Statement: Here’s where we go for the sale, in the business it’s named a “call to action” because it’s supposed to compel visitors to take some sort of action.  A closing statement with a CTA might look something like this:

Whether you need one widget to keep production going or thousands of widgets to outfit your factory, Tom’s Widgets is there to keep your productivity lines moving forward.  Contact Tom’s Widgets today for an estimate on our high quality widgets.

So, what’s wrong with the above copy?  Well, nothing inherently.  It gets to the point, tells me what I need to know and solves a big problem.  I’ve written copy just like this dozens of times, I think I just want a little bit more… I don’t need Hemmingway, I just need some personalization.  I turned then to Google Blog search and, voila!  I found some great surf blogs written in an authentic, travelers tone.  I guess the difference is that bloggers aren’t necessarily trying to sell anything, they’re trying to tell a story.

Sales copy is written with a specific goal in mind, to drive visitors (much like sheep, or lemmings) to perform a certain act.  That act may be something like signing up for a newsletter, filling out an inquiry form, or even making a purchase.  No doubt about it either, many of the ‘rules’ based on eye tracking studies, copywriting and user experience studies indicate are totally valid.

I long for the day that businesses break the mold of corporate and sales based communications to take on the more honest and open approaches found prevalently in the blogosphere, and I think to do that – we need to look past the conversion to really see the conversation.  So what do I mean by looking past the conversion?   Looking past the conversion is about connecting with the actual people visiting your site and starting real conversations with them, talking about actual experiences and telling the story of your business.  Maybe it’s idealistic, but it’s something to work towards.

Seth Godin recently blogged the article “Powerpoint makes us stupid” – these bullets can kill.   See, the Powerpoint revolutions has created some casualties, not the least of which are organizations (like the US Army) bogged down with ambiguous and overcomplicated presentations and, possibly worst of all, the common trend to write content using bullet points.

People like bullets (not all people, but more on that shortly).  They like bullets because:

• Bullets are an effective way of organizing content.
• Bullets summarize important points for quick and easy understanding.
• Bullets are easy, reading online is hard.
• Content developers can use bullets to explain key points rather than explain them with language.

It didn’t escape me that I used a bulleted list, I did it to make a point.  The list above is easy to read and it gets a point across, but it’s cold and impersonal.  It conveys information, but my tone of voice is completely lost.

So, like, think of it this way.  When I write for this blog, I tend to write  – more or less – how I actually speak.  If we were talking about bullet points over coffee (because bullets are cool), the conversation would be a lot like the one I’ve started above – though the live version would be decidedly less one-sided.  If I were writing for a rack card or brochure I might change my tone to sound more poetic.  If I were writing for a corporation I’d use formal language and speech.  This is all tone of voice, matching the language of the reader.

Using bullets is the absence of tone.  Bulleted lists are to writing what paint-by-numbers are to art, the effect without the inspiration. So why are they still used so frequently?  The answer, not surprisingly, lies in the problem of a slightly misogynist web.  Stay with me while I ponder…

The internet was and still is a field where men hold most of the key positions (That’s why cracked always makes the front page of Digg).  I’m not suggesting that women haven’t contributed as much, quite the contrary, but I’m suggesting that the web wasn’t (and isn’t) built for women.  This doesn’t jive with modern marketing ideas, we know that women make most of the household buying decisions – well over 90%, so why don’t websites target that?

There are rules that govern design and communication, most of those rules defined by previous theories.  Phrases like “above the fold”, “bullet points” and “call to action” are all things to look for in “effective” web content.  Not so plainly, notice how they all have a decidedly military feel to them?  It’s all very manly, the web, or at least it was.

Social media is about sharing and connecting, and in this – women rule.  They are more likely to share content and connect with other people like themselves, (men are more interested in creating content).   Women want to connect, to hear stories and to get long term value, men just want glory and status.  Some companies are successfully marketing to women, but most are still failing and it’s because while their design and brand has changed, they’re still writing and building for men.

I have some theories about how some old rules are dying, or should die, and they lead to how to write better content.

The first old rule I want gone is bullets.  No more, please?  We all have big monitors now, nobody is surfing in 800 x 600 and, unless there’s something we won’t understand unless you explain it in point form, or your audience is exclusively men, we just don’t need them anymore.  Women don’t like bullet lists, I don’t like them either.

Then I want to see people craft content to make the most of new resolutions.  Turn to the website on your left.  Now turn to the website on your right.  Both of them were likely designed for 1024 x 768 resolution or less.  Did you know that ol’ 1024 x 768 (finally) is the third most used resolution with 1600 widths topping the charts?   Well, it is, and it’s a great landscape to craft awesome content.

Once I’ve knocked that small feat out, I want the whole world to start using contractions.  This rule of formal language (sans casual commentary) is old and I’m really tired of people writing “did not”, “was not”,  “is not”, etc…  Remember the old Star Trek: TNG Episodes?  Remember Commander Data?  Remember the unusual habit he had of NOT using contractions?  They did that specifically to make him sound less human.  When we don’t use contractions, it sounds as though we’re scolding our visitors through a robotic box.  Using them makes us seem more human and helps bridge the gap. Interestingly, I’ve discovered that a main reason for a lack of contractions is that apostrophes break source code.  As a marketer though, I’d say that’s the programmers problem.

And last (for now) I want the world to fix their error messages, notifications and confirmation messages to be more human, because I don’t like it when a web page gets angry at me for making a mistake.   I know this happens because web pages are made by programmers, and notifications are made to explain exactly what went wrong.  I fondly remember arguing with a developer friend who always wanted errors to be structural and informative.  I wanted to say things like “Whoops! We don’t recognize that email format, please try again”.  He wanted to say “That is not a valid email address”.  He never grokked that his would subtly treat people as though they were incompetent where as mine takes the blame onto the company.

The test I always run with web copy, or copy of any kind, is to read it out loud as things look very different on paper than they do when you say them.   Once you’ve tried to read a bulleted list aloud, you’ll probably never use one again.  Once you start writing naturally, not based on old methods, you’ll find your copy suddenly more appealing to people.

5 ways I’m bringing the semicolon into my life.

• I will use “and”, “but” and other conjunctions less; I will confidently use commas and semicolons instead.
• I will make more winkies in chat programs; I will discover other emoticons that require semicolons.

Ok, that’s only two.  I’m sure I can come up with three more.  Follow me on Twitter to see what they are!

You may be wondering what this has to do with link building. Stay tuned, I’m making my next post about it.

Above: Verdana, Below: Georgia - which speaks to you?

Type speaks.  The typefaces you use on your website will change how users perceive and interpret information.  The last few years have shown some major advances in the ways we are able to use different fonts on our websites.  You can use the @font face syntax in your CSS files to load a font from a remote server (A List Apart has a great article), and companies like FontSquirrel go so far as to provide @font face kits, styles just need to be copied and pasted.

You can also try Cufón; Cufón consists of two individual parts – a font generator, which converts fonts to a proprietary format and a rendering engine written in JavaScript.  It’s meant to act as a simple alternative to sIFR, which is known to be complicated to use and configure.

But we’re not quite there.  Fonts are very heavily licensed, and though there are free fonts available for use – chances are that you’ll end up using one of the 8 core web fonts rather than trying to find a free font that’s easily readable.  Those core fonts are all owned and licensed by the Microsoft Foundry, which is why you’ll find them in your version of MS office. They are made of up of three serif fonts (fonts with ‘feet’) and five sans-serif (no feet).

Serif fonts:  Georgia, Times New Roman, Courier

Serif fonts are often claimed to be more easily readable.  In my mind they project a certain inherent seriousness and trustworthiness, like the voice of a newscaster.  That’s not to say they do for everyone, there’s no empirical evidence that serifs are easier to read than sans-serif and in fact, sans-serif fonts weren’t widely adopted until the 20th century. Serif fonts are most closely associated with news and information; I like Times New Roman for headlines and Georgia for text in this case.

Sans-serif fonts: Arial, Trebuchet MS, Comic Sans, Impact, Verdana.

Forget Comic Sans or Impact for general text, neither are easily readable at small resolutions though I find Impact works well for headlines.  For text, you’ll be choosing between Verdana and Arial most likely as Trebuchet MS can look nice, but can be tricky when users don’t have that font installed.  Given the choice, I would choose Verdana.  Created in 1996 for Microsoft, it’s one of the most commonly used and readable fonts out there – like the Helvetica of the web.

Don’t forget the spacing.

Whichever you choose, make sure you pay close attention to the spacing: that’s line spacing, letter spacing and word spacing.  Too close together and the words become hard to read.  Too far apart and you may have “rivers” running through your text.

For now, our choices are still limited.

While the foundries and the browser companies hash out issues of licensing more fonts for standard use on webpages, choices to users without a lot of CSS experience are still limited.  Just try to remember that it’s not about what you like, the goal of type is to make a thing easy and enjoyable to read.  Until next time!

On the web, you are your website.  Your website (you) communicates with visitors, who in turn try and communicate with it (you again).  As in real life, sometimes there are breakdowns in communication, and the message doesn’t come across clearly.  Here are some things to watch for…

Too much wewe talk.  Not talk of small or diminutive things, or anything inappropriate – it’s talk about you.  Your company.  What you have done.  Why you’re great.  Why I, if I was smart, would buy from you.

This type of copy is a killer.  People respond more effectively to copy that talks about them, talks to them, solves their problem.  Copy that lacks a strong customer focus will lose visitors quickly.  If you mention your customers (you, your, yours) at least 2 times more than you mention yourself (we, I, company name), you’ll be doing well.  Don’t hurt yourself by checking manually though, use the We We Calculator from Future Now.  I scored 65% customer focused (alright, enough about me).  I challenge all of you to do better!

Too much jargon and meaningless corporate-speak.

Yes, we all get it. Your company is poised on the edge of several strong vertical markets, and ready to leverage new media and web 2.0 technologies to blow away existing old world dynamics and surge forward with new synergies and exciting, action driven initiatives.

Except nobody (except for looney tunes executives who don’t know what they actually want) really talks that way, and nobody likes being talked to that way.  You would be better off to say “We like all the new technology out there and are looking forward to incorporating platforms like Twitter and Facebook and using audio and video on the web to allow us to communicate with our visitors better.”

Fight the Bull is an extension for MS Office (works in Open Office as well) that analyzes your content for heavy jargon and meaningless speech.

Too many typefaces.  There can be only one.

I’ve been reading about type lately, two good books – one is called “Stop Stealing Sheep and Learn How Type Works”.  The other is called “Designing with Type”.  I like fonts and typefaces, both are important to communication as some typefaces convey trust while other can convey doubt.  Without getting into it too deeply (because I will later), conventional wisdom tells us that we should use no more than three typefaces at a time.  One typeface for the main headline; one for the copy; one for sub headings.

The colours, ooooooh the colours.

Your main font should be one colour, something close to black or dark gray.  Your background should be slightly off white.  Line spacing and letter spacing should make your copy easy to read.  If you must use colours in your fonts, or on your website, use them sparingly.  It’s not a circus tent, after all, it’s your business and unless your business supplies flashing coloured lights and tie dyed clothing, you should probably keep it toned down.

If you can’t write, hire someone who can.

Some people are great writers.  Some people write by smashing their fingers on the keyboard in rapid succession.  At least, that’s what it seems like when I read some of the copy out there.  I’m always amazed by the care and attention people pay to the graphic properties of a website and to what lengths they’ll go to get something ‘perfect’ and how little they seem to care about their copy. Don’t spend $4000 on a website and follow it up with amateur hour copy.  A great writer will work with you to craft your site’s copy, perfect a tone of voice and attitude and, most importantly, make sure grammar and spelling are consistent and correct.

Coming soon = Leaving now

If you have a page that says “coming soon, please check back later for updates”, that tells me one of a couple of things.  First, that you wanted this great website and maybe underestimated the time an effort it takes to write copy.  If the “coming soon” persists, I’m going to assume that you no longer care about your website.  If that’s the case, why should I or anybody else care?

These leaps in logic may be fallacious, but perception is everything.  If you can’t finish them, hire someone to. If you can’t do that, unpublish them.  If you don’t want to do that, believing that the “content helps for search engine rankings”, I’ll be blunt and say, all you’re doing is showing people what looks like a strip mall with half the stores empty.  Empty pages, optimized or not, aren’t going to help you.

Anything else?

Plenty, stay tuned during communication week at Harbour City SEO for more communication tips and tools.  Ciao for now!