Don’t be lame
Spend all of your time and money on a robust infrastructure to support the gorgeous, sifr-filled design for your new website, then attack the content when it’s all over. What’s that leave you? A brilliant site with copy that reads like an afterthought – because it was. What gives?
Sometimes, it’s the little things that Mrs. Rider taught you in third grade English that attract your attention – in a negative way. And I’m not just talking about that “About Us” paragraph on your homepage, or the more illustrious (and even more boring) “History” page content.
I’m talking about what happens when your expensive development and cutting-edge design suddenly aren’t working so seamlessly for the user. I’m much more forgiving when I find a broken page that reads, “Oops! We really jacked up something – the next time you come back, we’ll have fixed this problem. If not, please email us and we’ll try even harder,” instead of “Error. This page does not exist.”
Clearly.
The point is, even in the most unlikely of places, infusing your voice to create an engaging user experience with smartly crafted copy can elicit feelings – and actions – that you ultimately want your users to act upon. They’ll acknowledge that you’re human, you’re trying hard to make your site amazing, and that you’re engaged in trying to get them to come back for more.
Give your copywriters a chance to shine. Or give other copywriters a chance to help you shine. But, most of all, let others read and react to your copy before assuming it’s ready for the public’s eyes. When you don’t, you’re basically saying, “I don’t pay attention to details like this one!”
They’ll respond by bouncing permanently.
You’ve generally got one chance to entice users. Make sure the voice being conveyed isn’t lame.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: content as an afterthought, finding your voice, lame content
Totally agree, Steph.
One of the issues seems to be that a lot of the content for sites is done fairly hastily. In many cases, this is just the nature of the beast — folks are working on design and development up to the deadline before it’s totally clear what content is needed, perhaps. Hasty content is rarely engaging content, but it’s hard to say “well, budget more for content!” convincingly.
Question: You mentioned error pages, but what other typical areas of websites are often in need of more engaging copy? If I wanted to just focus on five or ten things to see if this whole “spend more time on the content” plea is actually worthwhile, where should that focus go?
Or maybe that’s another post…
That’s the challenge — to SAY it convincingly. If we as practitioners don’t believe it’s important, then how will our clients? We can’t just push SEO and expect those terms to be enough for users. Nor can we bash site copy knowing we don’t ever make it a priority.
That’s a great idea for another post, btw — Top places (both overt and subtle) to grab readers through smart copy. Love it. Stay tuned.
[...] questioned which pages should receive focused effort in creating brilliant copy. I understand it’s serious hard work for people to craft creative content for an entire site [...]