In Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug gives a spot-on guide to website usability— all that stuff that helps visitors to your site find what they’re looking for. What Krug’s book doesn’t touch on is the relationship between usability and search engine optimization (SEO) —how visitors actually find your site in the first place.

I really don’t fault Krug for this (too much) since it’s not his area of primary expertise, and there’s plenty written elsewhere on SEO. Still, a nod to SEO might have been nice since some principles of usability that Krug advocates can appear to be in conflict with best practices in SEO.

If you’ve read Krug’s book along with a few guides to SEO, you probably know what I mean.

The current maxim for SEO is “content is king” with textual content sitting high atop the searchability throne. If you want search engines to find your site, you need good copy. A picture may say a thousand words to most of us, but to bat-blind Web crawlers, a picture only whispers whatever you can squeeze into its alt tag.

In contrast, to make sites more user-friendly, Krug suggests you “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” (Cue hearty shouts of approval from graphic designers everywhere.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to ask you to humor me for a moment. If I say the word “writer,” what picture pops into your head? My bet is that your imagination immediately conjured up an image of a bespectacled man or woman sitting in the lone corner of a coffee shop with a Moleskine and a pen. Of course, your imagined writer is not conversing with the other customers or being engaged with the world because the best writing comes from the inner-depths of a writer’s mind and soul … right? Well, yes and no.

Poetry and fiction may be more personal works, thus requiring seclusion from the distraction of others. But agency copywriting is a different ball game altogether.

Marketing writing is a form of communication that is constantly evolving, and to be successful copywriters need to be actively involved with others. I have learned a few things from my experience in writing copy for Hile: Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re launching a new website, chances are you’ve made sure you’ve got the design and programming locked down. You know your site—your baby—needs to look better than your rudimentary web design skills will allow, and you’re the first to admit you know nothing about even the basics of programming, so you’re happy to farm those out. But the writing? Ah, the writing. Now that’s something you know how to do—and how hard can it be, really?

There’s the rub. And here are a few misconceptions people have about writing website copy.

1. If you can write well (or you’re in marketing), you can write web copy. Well, yes and no. A doctor can probably do a self-appendectomy if necessary, and a stylist can cut her own hair. But better to let someone else do it for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s hard to get the “angle” just right. And secondly, web copywriting is a special kind of writing. Sure, if you can write, you can learn to write websites and do it well. But you may not want to make yours or your company’s website your first try—at least not without some help.
2. It’s like writing a paper or an article. If you take this approach you may fall into what I call sequentialism, that is, the tendency to want each page to be a continuation of another, “previous” page. But if you take off your writer’s cap and put on your surfing-the-web-at-lunchtime cap, you’ll realize why this doesn’t make any sense. No one reads web pages in the order you think they should. There’s not even any guarantee that web users will enter your site via your home page, although you hope they will (that’s why you’ll make an extra effort to design and write your home page as carefully as you decorate your home’s entryway–because that’s probably the first thing people will see and it represents you).
3. Or, conversely, it’s like writing a bunch of one-page ads. If you write your web copy this way, you avoid the error of sequentialism but can instead fall into the trap of providing no connectedness between pages. When you write website copy, it’s important to keep in mind the overall structure of your website, the pages and subpages that are related to each other by subject, with major points and subpoints called out from page to page–and links between them to lead the reader where he wants to go.
4. Because there is so little copy on a page, it should be easy to crank out in no time. Anyone who writes regularly knows how easy it is to spend hours, nay days, reworking a single paragraph to get it just right. But because web copy can appear to be so much marketing “fluff” to outsiders, it looks easier to write than it is. With web copywriting, just as in any other kind of writing, every word counts. And you should make sure you allot a fair amount of time to the process, taking into account time for research, consulting with your web designer and programmer, and meetings with supervisors and others who have an investment in the final result.
5. I want my website to appeal to intellectuals or experts in the field, so I need to make my copy sufficiently lofty. With this approach, writers can fall into the trap of wordiness, jargon and excess, both in length of copy and in word choice. Web writers need to keep in mind that even the most expert of their site visitors will appreciate well-written, tight copy arranged in digestible chunks through the judicious use of subheads, bullet points and helpful links.
6. I need to cover the page topic thoroughly. This is a tough one. Unless your site is strictly informative, its goal is usually not to have site visitors read every last word of your copy—it’s to get them to do something else, whether that’s to buy a product, sign up for your company newsletter or call you to schedule a service or consultation. The key is to give people enough information to understand what you have to offer without boring them and sending them clicking frantically to get to a competitor’s site that can give them what they want quicker and without all the fuss. I received a wake-up call on this topic when a coworker (who shall remain unnamed) said to me when looking over my home page copy for a client site said, “But who’s going to read all this stuff?” Point taken. I don’t think I ever made that mistake again, and for that I am grateful to the coworker.
7. My cleverly written web copy will be my claim to fame. Don’t we wish. Maybe some of us will get an award for our copywriting excellence. But if we fall in love with our own writing such that we can’t edit it down, or if the “voice” the site copy speaks in is ours instead of the voice needed to speak to site visitors, our web copy will ring false and fail to connect with potential customers.

One helpful resource we’ve used here at Hile is the book Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. Although it’s a book about web usability and not specifically about copywriting, there’s so much helpful information in here, everyone who has anything to do with creating websites should read it. And, more specifically for writers, it can never hurt to take another (or first) look at Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. You can buy it on Amazon or just about anywhere, or you can save yourself some money and access it online.

Still want to write your own web copy? Go for it. Need a little help? Let us know. Hile provides a variety of copywriting services to meet your web writing needs, from consulting on your copy, to proofreading and light editing, to writing all of the copy for your site.

Every year Lake Superior State University publishes its “List of Words and Phrases to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.” This year’s list included such phrases as “going green,” “iconic” and “desperate search,” among others.

As Hile Design’s copywriter, it’s my job to keep copy (both in-house and client-related) clean and lean, which  means, among other things, keeping it as free as possible of both industry-specific jargon and tired words and phrases.

Here’s my own list of overused or confusing language. While I won’t go so far as to say these words should be banished outright (jargon is useful when people within an industry are communicating with each other, and some words are just too good to discard entirely), I’ve heard them enough on TV and radio, and seen them pop up in unedited client copy and print ads, to make me think twice before using them.

• Solution. I suppose it could be argued that every company is some client’s “solution,” but I’ve become weary of hearing this ubiquitous word. It’s used in every industry from technology to health care. An old adage in writing is, “Show, don’t tell.” So don’t just say, “Kitty-bites: Your finicky cat’s food solution.” Tell me why and how, or paint me a word picture like Meow Mix does: “Tastes so good cats ask for it by name.” Exception: Use it when a word rhymes with it: “Easy-Clean: Your backyard pollution solution.”
• Cutting-edge and out-of-the-box. These come from Hile’s creative director Julie Tibus (thanks, Julie!). The two words mean pretty much the same thing, and using them is supposed to show that the company they describe is really “with it”— with it enough, in fact, to think of using the words cutting edge and out-of-the-box. Except that everyone is now using those words to describe themselves or their particular “solution,” which means that if you do too, you can’t claim the description. Exception: Use the words when talking about pizza: “Ricardo’s Pizza: We’re your cutting-edge, out-of-the box dinner solution.”
• Utilize, over-utilize, under-utilize, utilization. I admit this word (and its many variations) is one of my personal pet peeves, because it takes the perfectly good, solid word use and turns it into what we used to call a 75-cent word (which adjusted for inflation, makes it a ten-dollar word). I’ll grant you that sometimes you need a three-syllable word to make the sentence flow. Companies that use “utilize” in their copy also tend to create complex sentences filled with company jargon about “cutting-edge solutions.” So, use use, if you can. Exception: Use it in a tongue-in-cheek way: “We’re the guys who utilize.” And you might be able to get away with rhyming here, too: “Realize. Prioritize. Utilize. Yep–We Do It All.”
• Global. Most local businesses won’t try to get away with this one, realizing that it would sound ridiculous to say,”Bob’s Corner Market: Your Global Solution for Items You Forgot at the Grocery Store.” But big companies use it in an attempt to sound experienced and far-reaching, which they usually are. The downside to this word is that customers can think you’re too big to care or provide great customer service. Exception: Use it if you’re a company that sells globes: “We’re global. ‘Nuff said.”
• ROI and other acronyms (CEO, COO, CPU). Some companies throw these around  to show they are knowledgeable about marketing or whatever industry the acronym falls into. Think fast: Do you know what ROI stands for? I got into writing early but marketing came along later in my career, so I had the disadvantage of sitting in on staff and client meetings while advertising jargon dipped and soared over my head like so many bats on a summer evening. If you have a background in marketing or business, or even if you took a business-related class in college, you know that ROI stands for Return on Investment, and you may think, “But everybody knows what ROI means.” Not everybody does (confession: I didn’t), but even if they did, that fact wouldn’t justify using the word as a tag line or main selling point of a service. So, there are two points here: Avoid jargon, particularly acronyms, and avoid words that don’t lead to a concrete mental image that helps you sell a product or service (see Solution, above). Exception: Use a bunch of acronyms in a single sentence as a way of making fun of yourself or to make a point: “Is your ROI getting held back by your CEO’s lack of creativity or your computer’s slow CPU?”
• Arguably. This word is not specific to advertising, but I’ve been seeing it everywhere lately, and it always makes me pause: “Justin Verlander is arguably one of the best pitchers in the American League.” OK, Are you saying that you really think Verlander is a great pitcher, or are you saying that people will probably argue with you if you say he is, or are you saying, “One could argue that Justin Verlander is one of the best pitchers in the American League”? It’s supposed to be a positive statement about Verlander’s pitching ability, but I always imagine people arguing whenever I read that word, and it makes me wonder. So I’m not going to use it (but you may if you like). P.S. Justin Verlander is one of the best pitchers in the American League. He just had a bad year last year.

Am I saying I’ll never use any of these tired words when I write ad or website copy? No, and you’d probably be able to find copy I’ve written where I’ve used more than one, either by client request or because I feel it’s the best choice for the situation. As a Hile creative, though, I try to avoid sounding as if I missed my daily McCafe and just went into autopilot, spinning out the first words that come to mind.

Do you have words or phrases that you’re just tired of hearing? Let me know. I might utilize them in a future post!