The Marriage of Design and Copy

We are gathered here today to join together … your web copy and web site design. The pairing really is like a marriage. They must spend their lives together, endure unforeseen changes in each other, for better or worse, and they must work together to make the marriage successful.

But how do you know if the marriage will work? Like any marriage, you don’t, but you trust that, with a little effort, it will. That effort means something more than just pluncking down hastily written copy on a web page template and posting it to your site.

Your web design should enhance your copy and your copy should enhance your design. Design improves copy when it highlights the copy and makes it easier to consume. Copy improves design when it gives meaning to design elements that are otherwise just decoration.

To make the marriage work, your designer and copywriter must work together; both understanding your key messages, the purpose of the site and your target audience(s).

If one must flow from the other, write your copy first. In the end, it’s your copy that compels action, at least most often, and its tone and direction will be the cue for your design. (Yes, I am a copywriter.)

However it happens, it is important for your business that the union of design and copy is a happy one. Happy design/copy marriages are fruitful and produce lots of little clicks on your call-to-action.

Bad marriages? No clicks.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Web Copy Migration - Expensive Cost Cutting

Eye candy is seductive. Web visitors who stumble upon a site with innovative design will stop to take in the eye-catching treat. That they have a creative design is a unique selling feature of many sites.

It’s the reason many small businesses put a strong emphasis on having a creative, “leading edge” design. There is nothing wrong with emphasising design creativity when it fits with the goals of your web site.

Problems arise when you sacrifice other important elements of your site for the sake of an off-the-chart design. Your web site’s copy and structure are just as important to your overall web design as colour, layout and effects (easy on the effects – remember the goal of your site).

As it is an important design element, you should create copy specifically for your web design, just as you do with other elements. Migrated web copy, copy taken from your brochures, sell-sheets or old web site, doesn’t fit. Not only will it make your web copy less effective, it could ruin your snazzy design and chase away your web visitors. Saving money by migrating copy can be very expensive.  

Happy Halloween, and go easy on the candy!

By Stephen Da Cambra

with thanks to New Thinking

Write for Everyman - & Every Person in Your Target Market

We recently read an interesting blog post that talks about engaging “everyman” with your web copy. The author is absolutely right; your copy needs to reach the masses and too many big words or industry jargon tends to drive the masses away.

You can also take the concept beyond your copy and use it across your entire internet marketing program. But be warned, while you have help for creating copy in layman’s terms, like keyword tools, there’s nothing similar to help you decide what web design, social media profile or viral message will work for the masses.

Beginning with your web design, you must appeal to the broadest range of potential customers. Not everyone arrives at your site looking for the same thing and they may not be at the same stage in the buying cycle. For example, if you develop a new High Tech Doodad and introduce it on your web site, you will attract a lot of traffic looking for basic information, like a product description. If you have competition for the Doodad, others will arrive at your site looking for more advanced information that will help them decide which HT Doodad is best. Fortunately, when it comes to high tech items, there’s a large contingent who simply must have the latest Doodad and they will come to your site looking to buy.

See what’s happening? Your site needs to appeal to visitors who are in search of a broad range of useful information. From looking for basic information to ready to buy, they all will arrive at your site and if you don’t give them what they’re looking for fast, you risk losing them, perhaps forever.

The same is true for all your other internet marketing initiatives. You should give the masses what they seek from you.

Get your message across to the everyman – and every person, or at least as many as you can, regardless of where they are in their search for information or products.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Web Copy in the Newspaper

It finally happened. 

For more years than I will admit, it is my habit to spend Saturday and Sunday mornings supine on the couch, tea and toast at easy reach, reading the weekend papers by the light of the picture window. 

It takes a bit of time each morning to slowly detach from my world and sink into whatever might be happening elsewhere.  I haven’t quite settled in during the front page - it’s just a warm-up - and I’m usually not fully submerged until half way through the first section.

That’s about the point when ‘it’ happened.  I came across an article in which I was mildly interested, if only for a few sordid details.  I wanted to know the details, but didn’t want to read the long article.  My eyes started skimming through the copy, but I didn’t pick up the sordid scent and gave up quickly.  All I wanted were those few details!  My level of frustration seemed out-of-sync with the article’s relatively trivial subject.

The real problem hit me like a wake up alarm.  I couldn’t scan the article as I do with web copy.  That was ‘it’ – and there was no hitting the “snooze” button on this one.

Somehow, to that point in time, I had managed to keep my print reading sensibility separate from my web reading sensibility.  I wasn’t even conscious I had more than one reading sensibility.

I thought I might never be able to enjoy the weekend paper again – I had fallen victim to my web reading ways, which demand scannability.  (In truth, you’ll still have to tilt your head to look me in the eye on a weekend morning).

Web surfers prefer quick, scannable hits of pure information for a number of reasons.  Most of them relate to the sheer volume of information on the net.  Back in the age of print, if you wanted to learn about social issues in Mallorca, a visit to the library might yield 5 books that were generally about Mallorca, and a magazine article about the social issues. 

I just googled “social issues Mallorca” and got 42,100 results.  While the first few are about specific issues, none summarize the situation and, by the bottom of the second page of search results, the relevancy had dropped off to include:

Mallorca Cricket Club - About Us

The A.M.C deals with all the central issues for the Mallorca Cricket Club such as incoming tours, away tours, fundraising, promotional activity and social ...

A web search leads to exponentially more information than traditional sources, but much of it is irrelevant.

In any case, web surfers need to get through a lot of stuff – plus keep 12 conversations and one musical collaboration going on three different social media sites.  They don’t have time for the extra information, until they find what they seek.

Your web copy must be scannable – and we mean any web copy, even long copy.  Whether you use bullets, bolded text, short paragraphs, any combination of these or something entirely new, it doesn’t matter, as long as readers get a clear idea of the contents of your web page from a quick scan.

By Stephen Da Cambra