Passionate about killing for love

Since the dawn of time, how delighted you say you are to announce something, how passionate you say you are about a certain subject matter, or your report on your mood generally has been of no interest whatsoever to your potential customer.

Web copywriters of the world, this remains the case, and if it ever changes I promise you, as my solemn oath, you shall be the first to know!

Bleating on inanely about how thrilled, excited, passionate, fervent, ardent, zealous, avid, obsessive or fanatical you are about your subject matter is of absolutely no interest to me, or your other customers.  And yes I did use a thesaurus to get all those words.  But you started it!

The briefest of journeys around the web will convince you that the web is just falling over itself with this sycophantic self serving copywriting style.  This vanity parade is the online equivalent of talking about yourself in the third person; something Gareth Dunlop has a strong dislike for.

I recently tried to get car insurance online and was pleasantly surprised to see a product which matched my needs exactly with just the call to action I was looking for “get a quote”.  I followed the link to read “Thank you for your online enquiry.  Every day in Ireland we continue to insure a significant number of people and we are very keen to have you as a customer.  To get a quote please phone 0800 123456 8am – 6pm on week days.”

Does their marketing team have any understanding of how little interest I have in the number of people they insure on a daily basis?  Or how little it matters to me that they are keen to have me as a customer?  Perhaps their marketing team go home to their loved ones and say “You know what honey, Insure Co were quoting EUR 1000 to insure me for the year and Crash Co were EUR 750, but Insure Co are continuing to insure a significant number of people in Ireland.  I think that’s worth at least EUR 250, let’s go with them?”  Good luck to the man who tries to make that one fly with my wife, he’s a braver / stupider / faster man than I am!

Lately this farcical copywriting style has started to manifest itself with passion.

We are passionate about design.
We are passionate about sofas.
We are passionate about tax optimisation.
We are passionate about rainfall numbers in Co Clare 2000 – 2010.

OK, so I made the last one up, but the others are real.

A child's first steps - BORRRRRRING - compared with tax optimisation

Think about what makes you passionate.  Gourmet food and fine wine?  Seeing your children take their first step, or learn to read?  Watching Brian O’Driscoll score a try?  A former lover from college days?  Not me, it’s tax optimisation that gets me going.  At first I was merely keen, and then became interested, expressive almost, but before I knew it I was passionate.

But not as passionate as a company I read about online just last week.  “To say we’re passionate about [ subject matter x ] is an understatement.”  An understatement!  Wow!  Imagine what words they would have used if it was a real statement?

Perhaps my favourite of all time is “Company X – passionate about everything”.  Surely these people must live on coffee and Red Bull just to keep their energy levels at the requisite levels to continue this joie de vivre for every single aspect of life?

The facts are simple.  People go online not to read promises, but to do things.  Don’t tell them how fervently you bounce out of bed in the morning to serve them.  Just serve them.  Stop yarning on about how excited you are about doing business online with them.  Just do the business online.  Enough already about how thrilled you are to provide a public service.  Just let the public renew their passport, get a new driving licence, find out when their bins are collected, or whatever matters to the public.

Those who can’t, bleat on about how passionate they are online.  Those who can, do.

The good people of this country have embraced the cause and I do believe we are witnessing the first truly organic, citizen-driven, social media campaign in Northern Ireland.

The message that the Maiden City should be recognised for this prestigious honour has been championed by the people of Derry and beyond. They have taken their passion online and it appears to have gone viral.

Facebook users showed their support by changing their profile pictures to the Derry 2013 logo.

Then came the Tweeters. Twitter avatars adopted the same logo and last night a Derry blogger created a Derry City of Culture Twibbon, an icon overlaying the profile avatar.

With more fans than the other finalists, Facebook is alive with chatter about the cause and on Twitter the #derry2013 hashtag is being added to tweets. Others are registering their support on the Derry/Londonderry City of Culture website as well.

The Derry/Londonderry City of Culture 2013 bid is now in the hands of the people.

We wish Derry/Londonderry the best of luck in their endeavour to win the UK City of Culture 2013 bid. We hope our fellow citizens continue to show their support for the bid.

Is this civic explosion of passion the element needed to push Derry ahead of its competitors and win the bid?

Get involved…..

Change your Facebook or Twitter profile pic.

Add a Twibbon to your Twitter avatar.

Add this badge to your website.

Register your support on the Derry/Londonderry City of Culture website.

Pantomime Villain - boo hiss - down with this sort of thing

The enemy used to be obvious.  Dressed in a stripy suit and carrying a bag on its back labelled “swag”, it typically took the form of an intro page, replete with moving graphics, occasional sound and “reinforcement of brand values” to really give the user an “experience” of “the brand”.  It screamed loud and clear “our design team can do animation” and “we don’t care about our customers”. It sharpened up the response times of users all over the world who found the “skip intro” link in mere nanoseconds.

In time, the most indulgent of web teams realised they were simply annoying their customers and so got rid of their frustrating Flash intro pages. However, too many of them have simply replaced the swag burglar with a more subtle, respectable enemy.  Dressed in a smart suit and saying all the right sounding things, this enemy isn’t so crude as to bore your customers with animated intro pages but rather makes them weary by hiding the important information in behind the dross.  Using age old techniques like CEO welcome messages, photos of the team, publishing everything and hoping that the customer can make their own way through it all, the respectable enemy has the same devastating affect on the effectiveness of your website.

Stanford University’s Director of Research and Design, BJ Fogg, published in his Persuasive Technology paper that irrelevant home pages cause 71% of people to leave immediately without going any further.  Can you believe that?  71%!  That’s like being rude to everyone who phones you up between Monday morning and Thursday lunchtime each week.  It’s like burning nearly three quarters of your mail when it arrives in the office or not replying to emails for a week.

We have to get beyond the notion that websites are beauty parades because we are paying an unsustainably high price for vanity publishing.

Conroy - one of the few true gents left

I was driving home from Dublin about a year ago and I was caught speeding just North of Dublin (or rather I mean a “friend” was).  He wanted to know how to pay his fine and so he visited the Garda website at garda.ie to find out how.  The first choice he was asked to make was “first time visitor” or “previous visitor”.  My friend immediately thought this was a trick question so opted for “first time visitor”. You can imagine his relief to see a smiling picture of Noel Conroy, Garda Commissioner, welcoming him warmly to the site, explaining its many features.  He couldn’t recall the last time he visited a Garda station to pay a fine only to be invited to meet the sergeant who would welcome him warmly to the station.  He felt sure that Noel would understand that he sped because he was in a hurry as his Mrs was expecting him home and he simply hadn’t noticed his speed.  After the warm welcome from Noel he pressed “enter site” and was finally able to work out how to pay his fine.

My friend couldn’t help wonder how long he would have lasted on the site were it not for the fact he needed to pay his fine.  He pondered that if it had been a B2B, e-commerce or an e-government website he would have been long gone along with 71% of everyone else.

Signposts To Clutter

“Sign Up To Our YouTube Channel” or “Join Us On Flickr” are often signposts on the homepage of our websites.  They are pointers telling customers that there is better content on someone else’s site – just not here.   In many cases these signposts should say “Go Here For Uncoordinated Video and Image Content”.

When we arrive at most of these channels the reality is that the content is out of context and meaningless.  Often the channel has few subscribers and the content viewed count low.  Out of context content is practically useless to the reader and distracts from their task in hand.  So why do we insist on putting these badges of dishonour on our sites inviting readers to sift through our non-task related content?

Our costly and well produced videos or pictures look great and mean a lot to us, that’s why we commissioned them.  It serves a purpose in our stories, messages and explanations while in context as part of a web journey.  Too often we forget that the majority of readers are on our site for a purpose, to solve a problem they may have or find the answer to a question. Pushing readers to content that is without context or answers their particular problem only serves as an irritant.

YouTube and Flickr have their function in many web strategies but for most they are simply broadcast tools allowing you to stream video and photography into your website. Isn’t it time that we put as much effort into paying attention to our customers information requirements as we speed on trying to get their attention in the first place?

Unfortunately the plan backfired and many customers thought the site had been hacked.  This lowered confidence in the brand and undoubtedly made customers nervous about shopping there.

Getting tired of answering the phone to explain that it was a part of their online strategy Dixons’ gave in and changed the site and removed the strapline.

A clear case of trying to be a little too clever with an online strategy

Dixons - The Last Place You Want to Go

Site Morse ranks sites on over 400 technical criteria.  What they can’t tell is the relevancy of the content to the reader. After spending a couple of hours poking around the best and worst council sites, it appears that the councils that have put the effort into getting a technically attuned website have also put the effort into creating a customer focused site.

Take the navigation of the Ballymena Council website for example:

No - I didn't cut out their logo. There isn't one on the site!

The top line navigation includes ‘News’ which is the same as the home page, ‘Council Projects’ which was last updated in 2007 and ‘Print Page’.  Who on earth looks in the navigation when they want to print a page?

Their sub-navigation starts with ‘Corporate Documents’, the council ‘History’ and includes information about councillors and their committee structure.

These are all areas of interest for councillors but not necessarily the public they serve. If for example, a member of the public wants to know when their bin is due for collection, that information is not available on the website.  This website is self-serving.  It is made for the councillors, not the citizen.

Now take a look at Belfast City Council, some 40 miles from Ballymena.  This website is subservient. It is made for the customer, in this case the citizens of Belfast.

In this site, the City Council has established what areas are popular with their citizens and has brought them to the fore.  They understand the need for advice and have featured this in the main navigation and central areas of the page.

Subservient architecture built around the reader, not the site owner

The ‘Council’ tab on the Belfast City Council website gives lots of details on how the council can work for the citizen.

What Belfast Council can do for you

The Ballymena equivalent has photos of the councillors.

Ballymena Councillors

A subservient website is created when the marketing team shows leadership. They push back on ideas that are not customer-centric and say “no” when the content is not relevant to the majority.   A self-serving website is created when the marketer is under pressure to do the bidding of their peers.

My reasons for arguing that pricing guides should be put online is because in a price sensitive market – such as wedding stationary, it is one of the first queries any perspective customer has.  If you had a bricks and mortar shop, and the potential customer walked through your door there is a good chance you can change the terms of engagement by asking the question “well what budget do you have in mind?”  Online the same privilege does not exist.  Customer expectations are dashed if they want price guidance and you don’t give it to them. Your competitor is only two clicks away and your competitor may address the price concern head-on.

There are certain industries that are neither price driven or suitable for generic pricing.  Those industries are sensitive to other aspects influencing the customers’ choice.  Unfortunately in most industries price is a primary factor when making choice.  Unless your product or service is the clear market leader, withholding pricing may mean you’re not even considered as your compeitor overcomes customer questions and builds trust.

Unless you sell web design services or design is pivotal to your business, like a boutique hotel, then content and structure are more important than design.

Amazon will never win a Best Website Design Award. What it will win is best and most appropriate content awards, as well as having a killer customer journey.  So the next time you need a new website, perhaps prioritise your time and efforts into creating a:

• Clear online strategy with defined outcomes and objectives
• Customer focused structure with clear customer journey and easy to find call-to-action triggers – such as call us on this number or add to basket or donate now
• Concise and appropriate content.  Use video where it works better than text and animation when explaining complex interactions
• Good website design

It is simple to criticise website design because design is subjective.  I argue that you should spend more time debating what really matters – the objectives of the site, its structure, the customer journey and ultimately the content.