<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" version="2.0">

<channel>
	<title>Usable Words Blog</title>
	
	<link>http://usablewords.com/blog</link>
	<description>Language and writing on the web and beyond</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:08:11 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
			<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Textual" /><feedburner:info uri="textual" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><feedburner:emailServiceId>Textual</feedburner:emailServiceId><feedburner:feedburnerHostname>http://feedburner.google.com</feedburner:feedburnerHostname><item>
		<title>Declare independence: Learn basic HTML (if I can do it, anyone can!)</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/xaGJIuyg_ps/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/183/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:07:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=183</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a cross post from The Brunx, a new group blog that some colleagues and I have created. It&#8217;s a blog to help website owners get smarter about using the web. Have a look and if you like it, subscribe!
As a website owner, you want to be in control of your website. In particular, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>This is a cross post from <a href="http://thebrunx.com.au" target="_blank">The Brunx,</a> a new group blog that some colleagues and I have created. It&#8217;s a blog to help website owners get smarter about using the web. Have a look and if you like it, subscribe!</em></p>
<p>As a website owner, you want to be in control of your website. In particular, you want to be able to change your site&#8217;s content as your business changes. You don&#8217;t want to have to pay someone else to make updates every time you launch a new product, run an event, or have a client success story to tell.</p>
<p>For all these reasons, most recent business websites have been built around content management systems (CMS). A CMS lets you add and edit content using a WYSIWYG (&#8220;what you see is what you get&#8221;) editor, which makes formatting your website as easy as using a word processor.</p>
<p>At least, that&#8217;s the theory.<span id="more-183"></span></p>
<h2>The problem with WYSIWYG editors</h2>
<p>If you&#8217;ve spent much time actually using a CMS, you&#8217;ll have discovered a sad truth: WYSIWYG editors don&#8217;t always do a very good job. Things go wrong for no apparent reason. The spacing between paragraphs will start looking wonky. A whole block of text will appear in a bigger font size and you won&#8217;t be able to fix it. Special characters (such as accented letters in foreign words) will look fine in the editor, but appear as gobbledegook on the website itself.</p>
<p>When one of these things happens, you have three options:</p>
<ol>
<li>Just put up with crappy-looking content</li>
<li>Make an emergency call to your web designer</li>
<li>Look at the underlying HTML and fix it yourself</li>
</ol>
<p>Now, you might be perfectly with option 2, as long as you&#8217;re lucky enough to have a responsive web designer who&#8217;s happy to make little tweaks and doesn&#8217;t charge through the roof to do it.</p>
<p>But today I want to encourage you to declare independence from your web designer by learning some basic HTML &#8211; at least enough so you can have a go at option 3. You can save a lot of money and time just by learning enough HTML to take a look &#8220;under the bonnet&#8221; of your CMS and fix basic layout problems.</p>
<p>And I promise you, it&#8217;s easier than you think. I&#8217;m a humble copywriter with no programming knowledge whatsoever, and I managed to pick up some rudimentary HTML in just a few hours.</p>
<h2>Um, what&#8217;s HTML again?</h2>
<p>HTML (short for HyperText Markup Language) is the language used to create web pages (apart from the ones built in <a href="http://www.thebrunx.com.au/not-that-flash-have-burke-associates-made-a-decision-theyll-regret/">Flash</a>). An HTML page consists of blocks of text surrounded by &#8220;tags&#8221; that tell your browser how to interpret that text. For example, there are HTML tags that tell the browser &#8220;this is a heading&#8221;, &#8220;this is a paragraph&#8221;, &#8220;this sentence is bold&#8221;, &#8220;this is a link&#8221;, &#8220;this is a bulleted list&#8221;, &#8220;insert an image here&#8221; &#8211; basically, any kind of basic formatting you might want to do on the web.</p>
<p>(More advanced formatting instructions &#8211; for instance, defining exactly what a heading should look like &#8211; are done using something called Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. Unless you&#8217;re really keen, CSS is best left to the experts, but you don&#8217;t need to know anything about CSS to use basic HTML.)</p>
<p>You can see an example of HTML by selecting &#8220;View &gt; Source&#8221; (or similar) from your browser menu when you&#8217;re viewing any website. But more importantly for our purposes, any time you&#8217;re creating or editing a page in your CMS, there will be a button that allows you to toggle back from a WYSIWYG view to the underlying HTML. (The button will be labelled something like &#8220;View HTML&#8221;, &#8220;View Source&#8221;, or just &#8220;HTML&#8221;.)</p>
<p>When you create content in WYSIWYG mode (that is, using the standard editor), the CMS will try to interpret what you&#8217;ve entered and translate it into HTML. But this translation is often less than perfect. When something goes wrong, then as long as you know some basic HTML, you can click on the HTML button and tinker to your heart&#8217;s content.</p>
<h2>Important caveat!</h2>
<p><strong>Before</strong> you tinker with any HTML on a live page, make sure you&#8217;ve copied the original HTML to somewhere safe, like a plain text file. That way, if you end up making things worse, you can always revert to what was there before!</p>
<h2>Sounds good. So where do I start?</h2>
<p>There are a ton of basic HTML resources out there, both online and in book form.<a href="http://www.html.net/tutorials/html/" target="_blank"> Here&#8217;s a good one to start with.</a> Don&#8217;t feel like you have to master everything: most of these books and tutorials teach you enough HTML to create a whole website, whereas you really only need to know how to format blocks of text.</p>
<h2>Even if you learn nothing else&#8230;</h2>
<p>Keep a <a href="http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/ASCII-HTML-Characters/index.php" target="_blank">list of HTML character codes</a> handy. By inserting one of these codes directly into your HTML, you can ensure that browsers don&#8217;t have conniptions when they try to display special characters like accented letters, currency symbols, ampersands and so on.</p>
<p>For example, say I have a German employee called Müller who is particular about having the umlaut appear correctly in his name. All I need to do is look up the HTML code for &#8220;u umlaut&#8221; &#8211; it turns out to be <strong>&amp;uuml;</strong> &#8211; and insert it in the appropriate place in the HTML. In HTML, &#8220;Müller&#8221; looks like &#8220;M&amp;uuml;ller&#8221;.</p>
<p>As you get more familiar with HTML, you&#8217;ll often find it quicker to edit in HTML directly, rather than trying to work out how to do something in the WYSIWYG editor. If you get really keen, you may end up working in HTML pretty much full time. But you don&#8217;t need to go that far &#8211; any knowledge of HTML, no matter how small, will make you more independent and confident when it comes to editing your website.</p>
<p><strong>Have you ever tried to learn HTML? Share your experiences and your favourite resources in the comments.</strong></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=xaGJIuyg_ps:d8CsPkLMaAQ:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=xaGJIuyg_ps:d8CsPkLMaAQ:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/xaGJIuyg_ps" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/183/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/183/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Who’s your website for?</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/XvPuTW8AB1I/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/whos-your-website-for/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[customer-centric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[organisation-centric]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[usability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=172</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As anyone who works on the web will tell you, there are two kinds of business website:

Websites built for their owners
Websites built for their customers

The first kind of website &#8211; the kind that goes on and on about how wonderful the business is, how revolutionary its products are, how many combined years of experience its [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As anyone who works on the web will tell you, there are two kinds of business website:</p>
<ol>
<li>Websites built for their owners</li>
<li>Websites built for their customers</li>
</ol>
<p>The first kind of website &#8211; the kind that goes on and on about how wonderful the business is, how revolutionary its products are, how many combined years of experience its partners have, how its showroom is the biggest in the Southern hemisphere, and how if that&#8217;s not impressive enough they also have this expensive piece of Flash animation to look at &#8211; is what <a href="http://giraffeforum.com/wordpress/" target="_blank">Gerry McGovern</a> calls &#8220;organisation-centric&#8221;. Absolutely everybody in the web industry thinks organisation-centric websites are bad. (Mysteriously, that hasn&#8217;t stopped them being built.)</p>
<p>We all agree, then, that the second kind of website &#8211; what McGovern calls &#8220;customer-centric&#8221; &#8211; is the good kind. Of course, it&#8217;s no surprise that usability experts like McGovern want websites to be customer-centric. But so, nowadays, do web marketers, designers, developers and copywriters.</p>
<p>So that&#8217;s that, then. We can get on with our jobs, confident that we all think our websites should be built to please customers, not owners. Who&#8217;s for a quick chorus of &#8220;Kumbayah&#8221;?</p>
<p>If only it were that simple.</p>
<h2 style="font-size: 1.5em;">There&#8217;s customer-centric and there&#8217;s customer-centric&#8230;</h2>
<p>The thing is, saying a website should be &#8220;built for customers&#8221; can itself mean two different things:</p>
<ol>
<li>The site should <strong>persuade</strong> customers to do <strong>what we want them to do.</strong></li>
<li>The site should <strong>help</strong> customers to do <strong>what they came to do.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>The first position is commonly held by sales and marketing professionals, the second by usability experts. Now, I don&#8217;t believe that either position is inherently right or wrong: the point is, they&#8217;re different.</p>
<p>Of course, &#8220;different&#8221; doesn&#8217;t always mean &#8220;incompatible&#8221;. In some cases, a sales or marketing objective can dovetail perfectly with a usability objective. Example: you visit Amazon to buy a book. The shopping cart makes it easy to do what you came to do. But at the same time, you&#8217;re fulfilling Amazon&#8217;s sales objective by handing over your credit card details. Bring out the guitars, it&#8217;s &#8220;Kumbayah&#8221; time!</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s not always that easy: sometimes, sales or marketing objectives and usability objectives <strong>interfere</strong> with each other.</p>
<h2 style="font-size: 1.5em;">When marketing and usability collide</h2>
<p>Here&#8217;s an example: a bank wants to make it easy for customers to use its website for internet banking. But it also wants to &#8220;cross-sell&#8221; other products to those customers. It&#8217;s very, very hard to do the cross-selling without interfering with the usability of the internet banking. In the long term, the bank&#8217;s best bet &#8211; even from a marketing point of view &#8211; is to avoid annoying its customers at all costs. But because marketing tends to be driven by short-term objectives and measurable conversions, all too often the loyal customer will end up getting bombarded by pop-up ads.</p>
<p>Another example: as a professional gardener, you have some really valuable expert knowledge to offer website visitors. From a usability perspective, the best thing to do would be to just give all that knowledge away, no sign-ups, no hoops to jump through. But from a marketing perspective, you&#8217;re not a charity: at some point you want to make people subscribe to your newsletter before you give them any more goodies. This is a situation where it&#8217;s probably <strong>right</strong> to compromise usability for marketing reasons. (Naturally, you should still make the newsletter signup process as usable as possible.)</p>
<h2 style="font-size: 1.5em;">Find a balance</h2>
<p>Every good website has a different balance between marketing and usability. The key point: don&#8217;t assume that just because your website is &#8220;customer-centric&#8221;, you&#8217;ll never have to choose between conflicting priorities. Finding the right balance only becomes easy when you&#8217;ve worked out <strong>what &#8220;customer-centric&#8221; means for you.</strong></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=XvPuTW8AB1I:Tqn_BtCLNiw:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=XvPuTW8AB1I:Tqn_BtCLNiw:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=XvPuTW8AB1I:Tqn_BtCLNiw:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/XvPuTW8AB1I" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/whos-your-website-for/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/whos-your-website-for/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Predictably irrational moment</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/rOEI_6Iyx-Q/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/predictably-irrational-moment/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2009 01:15:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[labels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=167</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I couldn&#8217;t tell the difference between these two types of sheep&#8217;s milk yoghurt.
One was green. One was blue. But they both had the same list of ingredients and I couldn&#8217;t for the life of me work out why they were two different products.
So I bought neither.
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-168" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="19042009" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/19042009-300x225.jpg" alt="19042009" width="300" height="225" />I couldn&#8217;t tell the difference between these two types of sheep&#8217;s milk yoghurt.</p>
<p>One was green. One was blue. But they both had the same list of ingredients and I couldn&#8217;t for the life of me work out why they were two different products.</p>
<p>So I bought neither.</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=rOEI_6Iyx-Q:WKuPeyZyjLk:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=rOEI_6Iyx-Q:WKuPeyZyjLk:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=rOEI_6Iyx-Q:WKuPeyZyjLk:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/rOEI_6Iyx-Q" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/predictably-irrational-moment/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/predictably-irrational-moment/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Meet my new site</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/bgWbJBAu1TM/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/meet-my-new-site/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:20:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[usable words website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=164</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As you can see, I have a brand new website. (Well, you can&#8217;t see it if you&#8217;re reading this via an RSS reader, so do you mind clicking through just this once?)
Rather than posting something long, I&#8217;ll give you a chance to have a look around. But I do have some people to thank, most [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As you can see, I have a brand new website. (Well, you can&#8217;t see it if you&#8217;re reading this via an RSS reader, so do you mind clicking through just this once?)</p>
<p>Rather than posting something long, I&#8217;ll give you a chance to have a look around. But I do have some people to thank, most importantly Rikki Bochow and Stuart Steel at <a href="http://acornweb.com.au" target="_blank">Acorn Web</a> who built the site for me.</p>
<p>I think Rikki&#8217;s done a fantastic job of designing an attractive site that&#8217;s almost all text. And Stu isn&#8217;t just generous with his employees&#8217; time; he&#8217;s also a fount of great ideas.</p>
<p>One of his best ideas, in fact, was the &#8220;interactive demo&#8221; which you can get to from every non-blog page on the site. Have a look at it, it&#8217;s pretty nifty. While we&#8217;re at it, I&#8217;ve got an offer for you, loyal readers (or some of you at least). If you&#8217;ve made it all the way through the demo, you&#8217;ll see that one of the things I try to illustrate is the importance of links.</p>
<h2>Here&#8217;s the offer</h2>
<p>The only thing is, the bits of linked text in the demo don&#8217;t point to anything yet. <strong>Would you like one of them to point to something you&#8217;ve written?</strong> I&#8217;d be happy to do so, if you&#8217;ve written something that clearly and succinctly illustrates one of the following points:</p>
<ul>
<li><span class="hyperlink links">Most web users don&#8217;t have a lot of time and are doing several things at once</span></li>
<li><span class="hyperlink links">On the web people tend to skim</span></li>
<li> <span class="hyperlink links">Use keywords strategically (rather than stuffing your site with them)</span></li>
<li><span class="hyperlink links">Make link text useful to readers</span></li>
<li><span class="hyperlink links">Tell readers what you want them to do next</span></li>
</ul>
<p>So if you have anything that might be suitable, drop me a line. (If you have more than one, feel free to send me all of them, but I won&#8217;t publish more than one link per person.) No strings!</p>
<p>Oh, and before anyone suggests this, I&#8217;m already planning to offer a bookmark/Stumble friendly version of the demo.</p>
<p>Anyway, enjoy the website, and I&#8217;d love to hear your feedback. (This to Glenn at <a href="http://www.divinewrite.com/" target="_blank">Divine Write</a> for the very useful feedback he&#8217;s already given.)</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=bgWbJBAu1TM:OIeK281LTd4:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=bgWbJBAu1TM:OIeK281LTd4:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=bgWbJBAu1TM:OIeK281LTd4:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/bgWbJBAu1TM" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/meet-my-new-site/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/meet-my-new-site/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Why every local business needs an up-to-date Google Local listing</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/m5Pao0Qz2ME/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/google-local/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:21:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Add new tag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=157</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The other day I idly typed &#8220;copywriter melbourne&#8221; into Google (as you do). Here&#8217;s what turned up:

Yep, that&#8217;s me, the third link on the page. Pretty good, huh? Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s even better: this took almost no effort on my part. I only have a stub of a website at the moment, this blog aside. (My [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The other day I idly typed &#8220;copywriter melbourne&#8221; into Google (as you do). Here&#8217;s what turned up:</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-156 alignnone" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="copywritermelbourneserp" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/copywritermelbourneserp.jpg" alt="copywritermelbourneserp" width="494" height="412" /></p>
<p>Yep, that&#8217;s me, the third link on the page. Pretty good, huh? Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s even better: this took <strong>almost no effort</strong> on my part. I only have a stub of a website at the moment, this blog aside. (My real website is launching <strong>very soon</strong>, by the way, and just between you and me, it&#8217;s looking good.) I haven&#8217;t gone beyond the most rudimentary forms of search engine optimisation. And I&#8217;ve been in business for a shorter time than most of my competitors.</p>
<p>In fact, I feel a bit sheepish about placing higher on the page than experienced copywriters who&#8217;ve obviously put a great deal of effort into SEO. How did I do it?</p>
<p>To cut a long story short, I did two things:</p>
<ol>
<li>I listed my business with Google Local.</li>
<li>I happened to have an office close to Melbourne CBD.</li>
</ol>
<p>This listing, you see, isn&#8217;t a &#8220;normal&#8221; search result. In regular &#8220;organic&#8221; searches &#8211; the kind the SEO industry is built around &#8211; I&#8217;m pretty much where you expect me to be (nowhere, more or less).</p>
<p>But when searchers type in something that Google recognises as a location, Google thinks &#8220;aha, this person is looking for something in their local area&#8221;, and so the first thing it displays is a map showing businesses that have registered themselves as being located there. Those organic results that everyone works so hard for get relegated to second place.</p>
<p>It probably wasn&#8217;t Google&#8217;s intention, but this is particularly good for business like mine that are located close to a CBD. Even though people searching for &#8220;copywriter melbourne&#8221; are probably looking for copywriters in the greater Melbourne area, Google starts at the CBD and works outwards. Which is rotten luck for all the copywriters in <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=frankston&amp;sll=-37.79727,144.949312&amp;sspn=0.011377,0.013711&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;z=13&amp;iwloc=A" target="_blank">Frankston</a>.</p>
<h2>Here&#8217;s the call to action.</h2>
<p>If you have a business with any kind of address, even your house, you probably can&#8217;t do much to change your physical location (not at short notice, anyway!), but you <strong>can</strong> take care of getting listed right now. Go to <a href="http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?gl=us&amp;hl=en-US" target="_blank">Google Local</a>, and list yourself. It&#8217;s easy, and free. Go on, do it now. I&#8217;ll still be here when you get back.</p>
<p>Done? Good. Because what I haven&#8217;t told you yet is that for some of you, it&#8217;s just become <strong>even more important</strong> to have an up-to-date Google Local listing. You see, Google has just started serving up these local results some of the time <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-becomes-more-local.html" target="_blank">even when searchers don&#8217;t type in a location</a>! (They do this by making a guess about where you are based on your IP address. Hope that doesn&#8217;t feel too creepy.)</p>
<p>Now, this change will mainly affect businesses that are genuinely local &#8211; florists, dentists, pizza shops, and so on. [Edit: for businesses that aren't clearly local, like copywriters, the situation is less clear - see the comment from Glenn Murray below.] If you&#8217;re one of those local businesses, having a Google Local listing is now more important that being listed in any other directory, online or off. It&#8217;s the easiest, cheapest SEO boost you can possibly imagine. Hopefully you don&#8217;t need any more encouragement, because you took my advice two paragraphs ago, but I&#8217;m just saying.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s going to be interesting over the next few months is seeing businesses start gaming the system. I can see businesses registering under fake addresses in popular locations. I can see &#8220;public-spirited&#8221; competitors reporting those fake addresses to Google. I can see new businesses springing up to provide &#8220;legitimate&#8221; virtual addresses. Isn&#8217;t it funny how, in our virtualised world, a simple change on Google&#8217;s part suddenly makes actual locations important again?</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=m5Pao0Qz2ME:NUHkGgXnCSE:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=m5Pao0Qz2ME:NUHkGgXnCSE:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=m5Pao0Qz2ME:NUHkGgXnCSE:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/m5Pao0Qz2ME" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/google-local/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/google-local/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>“Work on your business, not in it.” Huh?</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/3getENlfM28/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/work-on-your-business-not-in-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:08:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[language]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unusable words]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=142</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;ve never heard the motto &#8220;Work on your business, not in it&#8221;, then you probably haven&#8217;t spent much time hanging around business coaches, or fans of the various iterations of Michael Gerber&#8217;s E Myth.
I haven&#8217;t read Gerber myself, but from what I can gather, &#8220;Work on your business, not in it&#8221; means roughly this:
If [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-143" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="2891582903_74fc01d8e7_m" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/2891582903_74fc01d8e7_m.jpg" alt="2891582903_74fc01d8e7_m" width="240" height="180" />If you&#8217;ve never heard the motto &#8220;Work on your business, not in it&#8221;, then you probably haven&#8217;t spent much time hanging around business coaches, or fans of the various iterations of Michael Gerber&#8217;s <a href="http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780887307287/The-E-Myth-Revisited" target="_blank">E Myth</a>.</p>
<p>I haven&#8217;t read Gerber myself, but from what I can gather, &#8220;Work on your business, not in it&#8221; means roughly this:</p>
<p><em>If you own a business, you shouldn&#8217;t be spending your time doing the day-to-day things that keep the business ticking over (&#8220;working in your business&#8221;). Instead, you should hire, outsource or automate these tasks, and concentrate instead on the &#8220;big picture&#8221; strategic tasks that will make your business bigger, more scalable, more efficient, more saleable down the track, and so on (&#8220;working on your business&#8221;).</em></p>
<p>Now, obviously there&#8217;s <strong>something</strong> to this idea, otherwise half the business people I know wouldn&#8217;t devote their lives to realising it. The problem is, these same people are often so enamoured of the phrase itself that they want to use it in their marketing copy. I think this is a mistake, for two reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>Some people prefer working in their business to working on it.</li>
<li>If you haven&#8217;t read the book, it&#8217;s not that easy to see the difference.</li>
</ol>
<p>The first of these is a problem with the <strong>underlying idea</strong> of the phrase, the second a problem with the <strong>wording</strong>. But both of them lead to what I&#8217;d describe as &#8220;huh?&#8221; reactions. Something that seems totally self-evident to the person saying it seems either wrong or confusing to the person hearing it. And that&#8217;s never good marketing.<span id="more-142"></span></p>
<h2>Problem 1: Some people prefer working in their business to working on it</h2>
<p>I&#8217;m a writer, not an entrepreneur. Saying that might go against the wisdom of the moment, but it&#8217;s how I feel. I want to work on my clients&#8217; stuff, not my own. I&#8217;m happy to do enough marketing and Big Strategic Thinking to get the clients and the work I want, but no more.</p>
<p>In other words, my idea of heaven is spending time working <strong>in</strong> my business!<strong> </strong>(Well, business heaven anyway.) Sure, there are a lot of mundane tasks that get in the way of doing that &#8211; bookkeeping, invoicing, CRM, etc. &#8211; and anyone who has <a title="FreshBooks" href="https://www.freshbooks.com/?ref=417964b9127021-1" target="_blank">a good, affordable way of reducing the time I spend on them*</a> has a good chance of getting my business.</p>
<p>But they&#8217;re not going to get it by promising me that I&#8217;ll have more time to spend on marketing, business coaching, &#8220;blue sky thinking&#8221;, joint venture proposals, franchising, or any of those entrepreneurial &#8220;big picture&#8221; things that come under the category of &#8220;working on my business&#8221;. I just don&#8217;t care about that stuff, still less enjoy it.<strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p>Now, if you think I&#8217;m the only business person in the world who thinks that way, or if you&#8217;re confident that your target market doesn&#8217;t include people like me, then this doesn&#8217;t apply to you. <strong>But if your market includes freelancers, especially writers and designers, there&#8217;s a fair bet that anything you say that assumes your customers are setting out to create an empire will fall on deaf ears at least half the time.</strong></p>
<h2>Problem 2: If you haven&#8217;t read the book, it&#8217;s not that easy to tell the difference.</h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s say you&#8217;re satisfied that your target market is full of would-be entrepreneurs. If you&#8217;re part of the &#8220;Make Money Online!!!&#8221; crowd, that&#8217;s probably a safe bet. That means Problem 1 doesn&#8217;t apply to you. As for me, if I&#8217;m not in your target market, then I&#8217;m <strong>very happy</strong> being excluded from your thoughts. Indeed I prefer it.</p>
<p>But there&#8217;s still a problem with &#8220;Work on your business, not in it&#8221;. This time it&#8217;s to do with the wording of the phrase itself. (I&#8217;m about to go into egghead mode, which is why I&#8217;m tackling this problem second.)</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s one symptom of what I&#8217;m talking about: <strong>Whenever I think of the phrase &#8220;Work on your business, not in it&#8221;, I&#8217;m always momentarily unsure which way around it&#8217;s supposed to go.</strong> Assuming this is not a personal idiosyncrasy, I don&#8217;t think this can be a good sign for your customers. As I&#8217;ve <a title="Let your x do the y" href="http://usablewords.com/blog/let-your-x-do-the-y/" target="_blank">said before</a> in one of my first posts here, phrases that force readers to think too hard about what they mean are bad copywriting. (That doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re bad writing!)</p>
<p><strong>Why</strong> is this one hard to nut out, though? At first I thought it might be that &#8220;in&#8221; and &#8220;on&#8221; are both prepositions and prepositions can be kind of vague. But a phrase like &#8220;Sit in the car, not on it&#8221; is instantly comprehensible and not at all ambiguous. So it&#8217;s not &#8220;in&#8221; and &#8220;on&#8221; themselves that are the problem.</p>
<p>But the thing is, &#8220;work in your business&#8221; and &#8220;work on your business&#8221; use &#8220;in&#8221; and &#8220;on&#8221; in <strong>metaphorical</strong> rather than literal senses &#8211; and not only that, they&#8217;re metaphorical senses with fairly vague meanings. Indeed the meanings actually overlap: is taking a client out to lunch &#8220;working in&#8221; or &#8220;working on&#8221;? It could be either, or both.</p>
<p>This is simply a fact about the English language: the verb &#8220;work&#8221; attaches itself to prepositions in vague, overlapping ways. Think about not just &#8220;work in&#8221; and &#8220;work on&#8221; but also&#8221;work at&#8221;, &#8220;work for&#8221;, &#8220;work with&#8221; and &#8220;work under&#8221; &#8211; they all mean different things, but there are plenty of situations where you could choose more than one of them.</p>
<p><strong>Moral of the story? When you&#8217;re marketing something, don&#8217;t use phrases that ask the reader to make fine-grained distinctions between expressions like &#8220;work on&#8221; and &#8220;work in&#8221;. And don&#8217;t assume that they&#8217;ll share your convictions about which is better.</strong></p>
<p><em>* Affliliate link | Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebastiandavies/" target="_blank">sebastiandavies</a></em></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=3getENlfM28:MAUf8y0nl_Q:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=3getENlfM28:MAUf8y0nl_Q:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=3getENlfM28:MAUf8y0nl_Q:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/3getENlfM28" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/work-on-your-business-not-in-it/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/work-on-your-business-not-in-it/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>40 powerful emotional benefits you can offer business clients</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/LImBsJO7Ya4/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/emotional-benefits-b2b/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:42:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Add new tag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[b2b]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[benefits]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[emotions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=136</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Emotional benefits? Business clients? If that combination sounds strange to you, keep reading.
If you&#8217;re nodding your head, on the other hand, you probably already know about using emotional benefits as a way of persuading potential customers they need you.
This idea has become pretty well-accepted in consumer product marketing circles (which doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s always applied [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-137" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="Suit" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/342812919_7186f256e1_m.jpg" alt="Suit" width="180" height="240" />Emotional</strong> benefits? <strong>Business</strong> clients? If that combination sounds strange to you, keep reading.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re nodding your head, on the other hand, you probably already know about using <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/emotional-benefits/" target="_blank">emotional benefits</a> as a way of persuading potential customers they need you.</p>
<p>This idea has become pretty well-accepted in consumer product marketing circles (which doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s always applied well of course!). But when it comes to business to business (B2B) marketing, there&#8217;s still an assumption out there that the only relevant benefit of any product or service is the &#8220;bottom line&#8221; or <a title="Why ROI is a terrible place to start" href="http://engineerswithoutfears.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-roi-is-terrible-place-to-start.html" target="_blank">return on investment</a>.</p>
<p><strong>That&#8217;s a mistake. A big one. </strong>When you&#8217;re talking to a business, <a href="http://usablewords.com/blog/b2b-communication/">you&#8217;re talking to a person within that business.</a> And business people are just as emotion-driven as anyone else.</p>
<p>Yes, business people need to justify their expenses. But the key word there is &#8220;justify&#8221;. By all means, follow through with some convincing-sounding numbers. Flatter business customers into thinking their buying decision is 100% rational. But start by appealing to their emotions, because <strong>emotion is what actually drives their behaviour.</strong></p>
<p>To get you started, here are some emotional benefits you might think about offering potential customers if you&#8217;re in a B2B industry:</p>
<ol>
<li>Be less busy.</li>
<li>Stop spending time on routine tasks.</li>
<li>Spend more time doing what you like.</li>
<li>Spend less time doing what you hate.</li>
<li>Make your workplace fun.</li>
<li>Make your workplace healthy.</li>
<li>Make your workplace relaxing.</li>
<li>Make your workplace green.</li>
<li>Look more professional.</li>
<li>Look less boring.</li>
<li>Look bigger than you are.</li>
<li>Find out what your customers think about you.</li>
<li>Understand what drives your customers.</li>
<li>Help your customers understand what drives you.</li>
<li>Make your customers love you.</li>
<li>Make your customers want to spend more time with you.</li>
<li>Make your customers want to tell their friends about you.</li>
<li>Get wonderful staff.</li>
<li>Keep the wonderful staff you&#8217;ve got.</li>
<li>Cope with change.</li>
<li>Cope with stasis.</li>
<li>Learn to recognise opportunity.</li>
<li>Don&#8217;t be left behind.</li>
<li>Beat the recession.</li>
<li>Get talked about.</li>
<li>Get talked about in better terms.</li>
<li>Impress strangers.</li>
<li>Learn stuff you don&#8217;t know about your staff.</li>
<li>Learn stuff you don&#8217;t know about yourself.</li>
<li>Help people learn about the great things you&#8217;ve done.</li>
<li>Persuade people to forgive your mistakes.</li>
<li>Get on better with other departments/branches.</li>
<li>Look like a hero in front of your boss/board/shareholders.</li>
<li>Convince your boss/board/shareholders you&#8217;ve earnt your salary (or your bonus!).</li>
<li>Get a promotion.</li>
<li>Be more powerful</li>
<li>Become the boss.</li>
<li>Help your community.</li>
<li>Make history.</li>
<li>Change the world.</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>What do you think? Which ones have I missed?</strong></p>
<p>(I know a popular one is &#8220;Work on your business, not in your business&#8221;, but I kind of hate that one. Remind me to talk about why some time.)</p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpreacher/" target="_blank">Diabolic Preacher</a></em></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=LImBsJO7Ya4:ZHfR4Ykazs4:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=LImBsJO7Ya4:ZHfR4Ykazs4:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=LImBsJO7Ya4:ZHfR4Ykazs4:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/LImBsJO7Ya4" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/emotional-benefits-b2b/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/emotional-benefits-b2b/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Copywriters and marketers: the word “killer” must die!</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/kriWwQpxZfQ/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/killere/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:40:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[killer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unusable words]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=130</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Am I the only person who&#8217;s sick of being talked to like a 14-year-old boy gamer?
&#8220;10 tips for killer copy!&#8221; &#8220;Dominate your niche with these killer content ideas!&#8221; &#8220;Killer strategies for destroying the competition!&#8221;
It&#8217;s all a bit&#8230;macho, don&#8217;t you think?
What if we stopped channeling Jean-Claude Van Damme and tried channeling Jane Austen instead, just for [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-131" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="Attack of the killer dumptrucks" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/2007610510_c3297132fe_m.jpg" alt="Attack of the killer dumptrucks" width="170" height="240" />Am I the only person who&#8217;s sick of being talked to like a 14-year-old boy gamer?</p>
<p>&#8220;10 tips for killer copy!&#8221; &#8220;Dominate your niche with these killer content ideas!&#8221; &#8220;Killer strategies for destroying the competition!&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s all a bit&#8230;macho, don&#8217;t you think?</p>
<p>What if we stopped channeling Jean-Claude Van Damme and tried channeling Jane Austen instead, just for a change?</p>
<p>Anyone agree? What other copywriting clichés annoy the bejesus out of you?</p>
<p><em>Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/diversionary/" target="_blank">simon.wright</a></em></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=kriWwQpxZfQ:Yby595SJhdE:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=kriWwQpxZfQ:Yby595SJhdE:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=kriWwQpxZfQ:Yby595SJhdE:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/kriWwQpxZfQ" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/killere/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/killere/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Modal ads: just say no</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/PofqqN9rksI/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/modal-ads-just-say-no/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:02:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Add new tag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[customer service]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[usability]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=125</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
My credit union (which, by the way, is a terrific organisation that employs excellent customer service staff) has recently launched a fancy new website that&#8217;s mostly very pleasant to use. But there&#8217;s one thing I think they&#8217;re doing very wrong: using modal windows to advertise their products.
It&#8217;s been a much-discussed trend in web interface design [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="size-full wp-image-126 alignleft" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="Jack in the Box" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/2511092181_8091139073_m.jpg" alt="" width=" mce_href=" height="240" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.mecu.com.au/" target="_blank">My credit union</a> (which, by the way, is a terrific organisation that employs excellent customer service staff) has recently launched a fancy new website that&#8217;s mostly very pleasant to use. But there&#8217;s one thing I think they&#8217;re doing very wrong: using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_window">modal windows</a> to advertise their products.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been a much-discussed trend in web interface design lately, littering sites with these windows that require users to take some action before they can get on with what they came to do. They do look pretty nifty and have their uses &#8211; they can work really well for quickly displaying full-sized versions of thumbnail images, for instance. In fact, I&#8217;m planning to have a (user-initiated) modal on my website, so I&#8217;m certainly not against them in principle.</p>
<p>But when they&#8217;re used for advertising, they really do suck &#8211; it&#8217;s the ultimate form of &#8220;interruption marketing&#8221; because users can&#8217;t get on with anything else until they&#8217;ve interacted with the ad in some way. On a banking site, which existing customers use on a daily basis to accomplish specific tasks, that&#8217;s an even bigger sin.</p>
<p>When my credit union started using modals to advertise credit cards a couple of months ago, I wrote to them with a polite objection. They sent me a prompt reply, which was great, but they didn&#8217;t really seem to be taking in what I was saying. They pointed out that there was a cookie preventing anyone seeing the ad more than once (fair enough, but some people disable cookies, and maybe once is one too many). And they went on to tell me again how wonderful the credit card was. So I guess they think it&#8217;s OK to interrupt people if the product you&#8217;re selling is <strong>good</strong>.</p>
<p>This week I see the modal ads are back, this time advertising mortgages. What do you think &#8211; am I being a drama queen, or do you agree that this is really not on for a financial institution?</p>
<p><em>Photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/houseofsims/" target="_blank">House of Sims</a></em></p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=PofqqN9rksI:bsfBkoYAr1s:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=PofqqN9rksI:bsfBkoYAr1s:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=PofqqN9rksI:bsfBkoYAr1s:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/PofqqN9rksI" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/modal-ads-just-say-no/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/modal-ads-just-say-no/</feedburner:origLink></item>
		<item>
		<title>Objection! Part 3: Putting it into practice</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Textual/~3/SR6II1MeTyU/</link>
		<comments>http://usablewords.com/blog/objection-part-3-putting-it-into-practice/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:37:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Angus Gordon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Add new tag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[market research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[objections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web content]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://usablewords.com/blog/?p=120</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is the final post in my series on dealing with objections in web content. The first two are here and here.
The story so far: We&#8217;ve established that, for any objection that might potentially get in the way of a person&#8217;s decision to buy your product and service, there are three broad types of objector: [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-122" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="Test tubes" src="http://usablewords.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/2440355239_58696d6965_m.jpg" alt="Test tubes" width="240" height="161" />This is the final post in my series on dealing with objections in web content. The first two are <a href="http://usablewords.com/blog/objections_1/">here</a> and <a href="http://usablewords.com/blog/explicit-objectors-latent-objectors-non-objectors/">here</a>.</p>
<p>The story so far: We&#8217;ve established that, for any objection that might potentially get in the way of a person&#8217;s decision to buy your product and service, there are three broad types of objector: explicit objectors (those who have the objection and will voice it), latent objectors (those who have the objection, at least at some level, but won&#8217;t voice it), and non-objectors (those who don&#8217;t have the objection at all).</p>
<p>We then went further and divided each of these three categories of objector into a further three subcategories. And we finished the last post by saying that the way to deal with all these different types of objector is <strong>not</strong> to try to write something that will please everybody. So what do you do instead?</p>
<h2>How to deal with multiple types of objector</h2>
<p>I could deal with this topic at very great length (well, OK, I could deal with <strong>most</strong> topics at very great length) but I&#8217;m going to boil it down to five steps:</p>
<ol>
<li>Think about the audience for this specific piece of writing.</li>
<li>Try to work out approximately what proportion of this audience will fit into each category of objector.</li>
<li>Work out how much impact answering the objection will have for each category.</li>
<li>Write your copy for the category of objector that looks most important taking both Steps 2 and 3 into account.</li>
<li>If you get the chance to address other categories implicitly, go for it.</li>
</ol>
<p>So let&#8217;s take each of these in turn.<span id="more-120"></span></p>
<h2>1. Think about the audience</h2>
<p>Hopefully, you do this for every single piece of copy you write. But it&#8217;s just as important to keep your audience in mind when you&#8217;re answering objections as when you&#8217;re promoting benefits.</p>
<p>To see why, let&#8217;s go back to the example of &#8220;Gloopy Glaze donuts are ultra-fattening&#8221;. Obviously if your audience is teenage video gamers, this objection will have a completely different valency than it would if your audience was middle-aged stay-at-home mothers.</p>
<h2>2. Assign a proportion of your audience to each type of objector.</h2>
<p>Now we&#8217;re getting into &#8220;easier said than done&#8221; territory! Yes, you can and should research your market, but what about <strong>latent</strong> objections? By definition, people in a focus group aren&#8217;t going to mention objections they&#8217;re embarrassed to admit to, still less objections they don&#8217;t even know about!</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not a market researcher, so I can&#8217;t tell you how to solve this problem. (<a href="http://blackbeardblog.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tom?&#8230;</a>) What I <strong>can</strong> say is that when businesses <strong>do</strong> manage to identify the latent objections their customers might have, they gain an incredibly powerful marketing advantage.</p>
<p>For an example of this, check out <a href="http://www.fluentself.com/blog/habits/3-ways-to-annoy-people-part-two/" target="_blank">this wonderful post</a> by Havi Brooks (I should mention that the whole idea of latent objections largely came together for me after reading this post). Havi talks about how for years she avoided trying acupuncture because she was worried she&#8217;d have to take off her clothes&#8230;something she understandably felt awkward about actually saying. If an acupuncturist had simply put something in their FAQ answering the question &#8220;Will I have to get naked?&#8221; (answer: no), they could have had Havi as a customer a lot sooner&#8230;and possibly a lot of other customers like her.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s another example: I enjoy cooking, and where possible I buy meat from traditional butchers rather than supermarkets. I&#8217;ll often come across one of those recipes that says something like &#8220;ask your butcher to bone and butterfly the joint&#8221; or &#8220;see if your butcher can get hold of aged mutton&#8221; or &#8220;don&#8217;t buy pre-ground mince, get your butcher to grind it in front of you&#8221;. That&#8217;s all well and good, but I am far too shy to actually ask a butcher to do any of those things. So if a butcher decided to put a sign up saying &#8220;Feel free to ask us to bone, joint, grind, or order in anything you like&#8221;, they&#8217;d instantly get my custom for life&#8230;irrespective of price.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know that there&#8217;s any quick way of getting this kind of intelligence from your customers. I suspect you just have to build up trust and keep listening to them. (And obviously, if they write blogs, read them!)</p>
<h2>3. Work out the impact on each type of objector.</h2>
<p>If you&#8217;ve ever played poker, you know that some hands are foregone conclusions. If you have the second best possible hand and your opponent has the best possible hand, you&#8217;ll almost certainly lose all your money; on the other hand, if she has the third best possible hand, you&#8217;ll almost certainly get all her money.</p>
<p>What good players know is that, because these hands will play out the same way no matter what you do, the correct strategy is <strong>not to worry about them</strong>. Instead, you concentrate on making the most from the situations you actually have control over.</p>
<p>In the same way, there are some types of objector on whom answering an objection will have <strong>no impact</strong>. These people might form a large proportion of your audience. But they should play almost no part in your decision about how to answer an objection. In particular, those people who aren&#8217;t going to buy your product no matter what you do <strong>can safely be ignored altogether.</strong></p>
<p>As for people who <strong>will</strong> buy your product regardless of what you say&#8230;well, don&#8217;t ignore them, because they&#8217;re your best customers and you can&#8217;t take them for granted. But recognise that when you&#8217;re answering <strong>this specific objection,</strong> it&#8217;s not these people you&#8217;re addressing. It&#8217;s the people who might change their decision depending on what you say.</p>
<p>This might all sound obvious, but in practice it rarely is. How many businesses waste their time trying to justify their prices to people who won&#8217;t buy their products no matter what? Or to take something closer to home &#8211; how many of us writers have spent hours trying to convince some blowhard who thinks he&#8217;s the next Hemingway that his prose is, in fact, unreadable and he should be paying us to fix it?</p>
<h2>4. Work out who&#8217;s most important and write for them.</h2>
<p>This is the really crucial step. If you&#8217;re Gloopy Glaze Donuts, how do you actually <strong>deal</strong> with the fact that a consumer magazine has come out and described your product as a heart attack with a hole in the middle?</p>
<p>First of all, you ignore the &#8220;no impact&#8221; groups. Don&#8217;t worry about the ones who won&#8217;t buy regardless; and forget (for the time being) the &#8220;Gloopy Glaze 4 Life&#8221; crowd.</p>
<p>Now, if you decide that of your remaining prospects, the <strong>majority</strong> will have read the magazine article and will therefore be affected by this objection in some way, it&#8217;s better to just come out and address it. Mention the magazine by name and tackle it head-on. (<strong>How</strong> you do that is another matter.)</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, the magazine is so obscure and little-read that you can rely on most of your customers <strong>not</strong> having read it, then you&#8217;ll probably want to take a different tack. In fact, you probably won&#8217;t even want to mention the magazine story directly, otherwise you risk turning lots of non-objectors into objectors!</p>
<p>Now, I&#8217;m not saying lie about your product. By all means, list nutritional information and talk about eating in moderation and so forth simply as a matter of corporate responsbility. But are you morally obliged to go out of your way to mention a publication that has panned your product? Feel free to disagree, but I&#8217;m going with no.</p>
<h2>5. Twofers!</h2>
<p>There is where it gets fun. As I&#8217;ve said, write your responses for <strong>one</strong> kind of objector. But the cool thing about putting this stuff in writing is that not everyone who reads what you&#8217;ve written is going to be the kind of person you&#8217;re targeting &#8211; and sometimes that doesn&#8217;t matter!</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a common example: when you answer an objection for explicit objectors, you pick up some latent objectors along the way. That truck driver who&#8217;s too embarrassed to mention he&#8217;s worried about calories? That&#8217;s fine, he can happily pretend you&#8217;re talking to <strong>other</strong> customers, but he gets his objection answered anyway.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s an even cooler kind of &#8220;twofer&#8221;: when you address an objection, you also send a message to the people for whom your objection is actually a point in favour. So, for instance, by mentioning the study that says your donuts are high in calories, you reassure those people who actually <strong>like</strong> the fact that it&#8217;s high in calories. Nifty!</p>
<h2>Tell me your examples</h2>
<p>That&#8217;s it from me. I&#8217;d love to hear what you&#8217;ve thought about this series of posts. What have I missed?</p>
<p>I&#8217;d also <strong>really</strong> love to hear your own examples of dealing with objections. Don&#8217;t be shy!</p>
<div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=SR6II1MeTyU:xGG6R5XCSsQ:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?i=SR6II1MeTyU:xGG6R5XCSsQ:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?a=SR6II1MeTyU:xGG6R5XCSsQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Textual?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Textual/~4/SR6II1MeTyU" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://usablewords.com/blog/objection-part-3-putting-it-into-practice/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		<feedburner:origLink>http://usablewords.com/blog/objection-part-3-putting-it-into-practice/</feedburner:origLink></item>
	</channel>
</rss>
