The key question to ask when writing web content

I’ve recently helped rewrite a local authority’s online content, and it’s been a powerful lesson in what matters most. Previously their website was mostly written by the people who delivered the services. Which would seem to make sense, as they’re the experts. But actually it was the website’s single biggest problem.

Experts, oddly enough, are the worst people to write about what they provide. They suffer from the curse of knowledge. They know their subject too well, so they don’t notice when they haven’t explained things clearly or fully, or where they’ve used little bits of jargon which to them are as natural and unnoticed as breathing.

That’s not all. The experts are also stuck in the perspective of the provider, not the user. When experts describe a service, they think in terms of the teams involved and the processes they use to deliver the services. They may also think in terms of strategic goals, or of the reorganisation they recently went through.

Users don’t care about any of that. Users care about how to solve their problem, find the answer to their question, get the help they need.

What’s even worse is that many of the service providers don’t want to tell the users clearly how to get the help they need.

Take this example: free travel to school. Basically, you get it if you’re below a certain age and live over a certain distance from the school, or if your parents are on a low income and you live over a certain distance from school. Simple really. You get a free bus ride to school.

But the people in charge of the service don’t like saying it’s free. They really, truly, don’t, even though that’s exactly what it is. Why not? Because if they said it was free then people who weren’t entitled to it might think it was free too. So instead they called it ‘school travel support’. And on the entire page about it, they never once said it was free or even defined what support meant. (They didn’t even use one of those delightful bureaucratic phrases such as ‘cost-focused transport support’ or perhaps ‘reduced impact transport service cost structures’.)

School travel support. What does that sound like to you? It sounds to me like help getting to school, aka the school bus. Or maybe it means help for disabled students. What it doesn’t sound like is ‘Free school bus services’.

It’s remarkable. The root cause is putting the service providers’ interests first: or, put another way, failing to put the users’ interests first.

So the single most important question to ask when creating web content is this:

What does the user need?

This small, innocuous question delivers dramatic results. It can change an entire mentality. It can revolutionise the usefulness of a website. Simply by thinking about what the people coming to the site actually want to know and want to do.

People will become less and less patient with websites that fail to answer this question.

Rewriting hot air: a worked example

Let’s work through an example of editing a piece of corporate blah. I’m often asked to do this – taking some writing that’s been written internally and reworking it into something that communicates clearly and quickly.

What follows is a real example, but it could come from a million different business websites. What’s interesting here is that this example doesn’t even look bad when you first read it. Bad writing doesn’t always look like bad writing.

Our team of regionally based Platform Adoption Consultants are tasked with supporting your firm with appropriate training, and to help manage any issues arising during the course of the adoption process. The team will specifically cover the configuration of the Platform to your needs and the creation and delivery of a tailored training programme and can help to migrate your clients to the Platform with a minimum of disruption.

It washes over you in a vaguely professional kind of way, doesn’t it? You gather it’s something about supporting you with adopting the new platform.

But doesn’t it sound dull – and complicated. Is that the point, you might wonder? Maybe this platform really is confusing and just a little bit depressingly corporate. But no. This text is meant to communicate ‘we’re solid, professional, reliable…’ But what comes across is that there’s no inspiration here, no real clarity, just a B2B business on automatic.

Let’s look closer at what’s going on.

Our team of regionally based Platform Adoption Consultants are tasked with supporting your firm

Why is it telling us about the responsibilities of these pretentiously named consultants? We want to know what they do, not what they’re tasked with doing. Cut.

Next:

help manage any issues arising during the course of the adoption process

So how does ‘during the course of the adoption process’ differ from ‘during the adoption process’? It doesn’t, it just adds words and complicates things. Cut.

Next:

The team will specifically cover the configuration of the Platform

Please, just tell me what you’re going to do. You’re going to ‘configure the platform’.

Next:

and the creation and delivery of a tailored training programme

Didn’t you already tell me you were going to support us with appropriate training? Why are you telling me the same thing with no extra detail but some fancier words? So you’re going to create the training, not just train us. And it’s not just training, it’s a tailored training programme. Impressive? It just sounds as though they’re straining to make something ordinary sound special.

Better to say the training thing just once, especially as there’s probably not much to it. I would bet a lot of money that the training just consists of a basic explanation of how some software works. A tailored training programme including unique exercises devised for each new customer, culminating in an inspiring graduation ceremony and gala dinner? I don’t think so.

So if we tackle those issues we’re left with:

Our team of regionally based Platform Adoption Consultants will help manage any issues arising during the adoption process. The team will configure the Platform to your needs and deliver a tailored training programme and can help to migrate your clients to the Platform with a minimum of disruption.

Kind of clumsy, but shorter. Let’s look again. Editing and rewriting are iterative processes.

We’re trying to communicate quickly. So why say:

Our team of regionally based Platform Adoption Consultants

when you can just say

Our regionally based Platform Adoption Consultants?

What about this:

will help manage any issues arising during the adoption process

Is there any difference between ‘help manage any issues arising during the adoption process’ and ‘help you during the adoption process’? Isn’t that what helping is – managing any issues that arise? So that can become:

will help you during the adoption process

OK, we’re getting somewhere. The final, rather ugly, sentence is:

The team will configure the Platform to your needs and deliver a tailored training programme and can help to migrate your clients to the Platform with a minimum of disruption.

Let’s consider that phrase ‘configure the Platform to your needs’. Isn’t the meaning of configure to set up something for particular needs? So we can just say ‘configure the Platform’.

‘Deliver a tailored training programme’? Please. You’re just going to train people.

‘Migrate your clients to the Platform with a minimum of disruption’? Well if you say ‘migrate’, we know that they’re migrating to the Platform. No need for ‘to the Platform’.

And what do we end up with?

Our regionally based Platform Adoption Consultants will help you during the adoption process. They will configure the Platform for you and then train you to use it, and can help migrate your clients with a minimum of disruption.

That’s now about half as long as it was. It’s clearer. But it’s not as nice as it could be. What’s this about ‘adoption process’? People adopt children, not software programs. Do we really need to say ‘regionally based’? And do we really have to say ‘Platform Adoption Consultants? And why the capital P on Platform – is ‘Platform’ really its name? (No.)

How about…

Our consultants will help you get started using the platform. They will configure it for you and train you to use it, and can also help migrate your clients with a minimum of disruption.

That’s 34 words vs 69. It’s lost the information about the consultants being regionally based, but that’s all.

Instead, we have a process that feels easy. And quick.

This matters. Why?

The text appears on a website that’s trying to sell the platform to customers. These customers know that setting up a whole new software system is going to be a hassle. The natural inclination is not to bother. So first you have to convey why it’s important to adopt this new platform. But, second, you have to make it feel effortlessly easy. And injecting a whole load of pompous hot air does the opposite.

The new version isn’t the best bit of writing ever, but it’s clear, clean and fast. It makes the process sound pretty frictionless.

This is how I typically work through text that I’m given to improve. Go through it sentence by sentence. Then see what you’ve got. Step back, look again. Go through sentence by sentence once more.

To be honest, our final version above is not all the way there. We now need to know what the tone of voice should be. What kind of brand is this? What impression do we want to give?

But without that stripping back and clarifying, we could never take those next steps.

Why ‘stay home’ worked and ‘stay alert’ didn’t, and why it matters

Here’s a simple seven-word slogan, the centrepiece of an advertising campaign that worked beyond the wildest hopes of its creators:

‘Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.’

It didn’t merely get attention, it dramatically changed people’s behaviour. Across the UK people really did stay at home. The government itself was taken aback by how successful the campaign was.

Why did it work?

It makes logical sense. The slogan begins with an action, ‘Stay home’, followed by the consequences of the action, ‘Protect the NHS’ and ‘Save lives’. That’s a clear narrative structure, even in micro form, and stories are basic, archetypal ways that we understand reality. Stories work.

But there’s a further aspect to the narrative and how it ‘moves’. It starts with your life. It then zooms out to the entire NHS. So this isn’t just about protecting you, it’s about something far bigger. And then there’s a further shift of perspective. By protecting the NHS you will save lives. In other words, the reasons for staying at home are overwhelmingly important.

As for the use of language, it only enhances the messages. Short, sharp sentences express urgency. The alliteration and half-rhyme of ‘stay’ and ‘save’ tie the slogan together.

The slogan works as a piece of writing, as a ‘story’ and as an exhortation.

But there’s one final critically important aspect. It’s easy to act on. The key instruction is placed first. What follows is justification and explanation, but the thing you have to do is right there at the start. Stay home. And why is this easy to act on? Because it’s specific and concrete. We know exactly what to do.

Some weeks later the UK government began, very tentatively, to lift the lockdown. People should no longer just stay at home. So a new slogan was released:

‘Stay alert. Control the virus. Save lives.’

You can imagine how pleased those working on it were. Look how the first word is the same as in the previous slogan! Because this a clever evolution of the previous slogan. And we kept ‘Save lives’ at the end too! Kind of neat, right?

Well yes. But hang on. What does stay alert mean? What does control the virus mean? Not defeating or eradicating it but simply controlling it. How do you control a virus anyway – tell it what to do?

Perhaps people should have been able to understand that what the government was really saying was: Hey, we can’t totally eliminate this virus, not without shutting down our society totally and destroying it in the process, so the best we can do is stop it from getting out of control and spreading absolutely everywhere fast.

Unfortunately the government hadn’t felt able to level with the UK’s population and tell them hard truths before. So it avoided doing so now, and instead hinted at the hard truths. By being creatively unclear. Big mistake.

How does one stay alert? Well, presumably the idea was that we shouldn’t forget to stay two metres away from other people (of course, the government never told us the reasoning behind this advice, one more piece of an insultingly patronising messaging strategy). But it didn’t say that, it said stay alert.

On first encounter you might read ‘stay alert’ as commanding and authoritative, but only until you start thinking about it. As JK Rowling put it, ‘Is Coronavirus sneaking around in a fake moustache and glasses? If we drop our guard, will it slip us a Micky Finn? What the hell is “stay alert” supposed to mean?’

And so the communications strategy began unravelling. As soon as things needed to be more nuanced, the messaging failed. Faced with communicating something honestly complicated, the government’s writers and strategists bottled it.

There are many lessons here. A few are worth engraving on your heart. If you want people to do something, be specific. Don’t focus on wordplay over the actual message. If you have nothing of substance to say, don’t pretend to sound impressive. Being evasive usually backfires. And don’t patronise people. You’ll get found out.

Your use of language speaks volumes about your organisation

A leading business wants to find ways to make its workforce more loyal, and begins work on an internal initiative which offers a series of promises to its team. Here’s how the initiative is explained to senior members of staff:

‘Across the employee lifecycle our behaviours, process and communications will help talent connect with the employee brand.’

Just take a closer look at that.

What’s this ‘employee lifecycle’? It’s as if employees are some lower life form, perhaps a moth, starting out as an egg (a trainee?), moving on to the larva, passing through the pupa, before eventually becoming an adult (that would be management). Not exactly heartwarming.

And what about ‘helping talent connect with the employee brand’? Talent? Connect with the brand?

Remember, this is about people, emotions and values. It’s about encouraging people to believe that the company they work for is worthwhile. And it talks about people as ‘talent’.

Let’s consider this for a moment. ‘Talent’ describes a person not for who they are, or what they feel, or they effort they put in, but purely by their skills – the things they can do for the company. You might argue there’s something positive about calling people ‘talent’ rather than ‘workers’, but it’s an oddly abstract term, like calling people ‘ability’ or ‘skill’. ‘Helping skill connect with the employee brand’. Put it like that and you can see how weird it is.

What about ‘employees’ – how’s that for a way of talking about human beings? Well it’s certainly familiar, but if you stop and think about it, it defines a person by their employment status – or even their position in the hierarchy. To paraphrase it: ‘You work for us’. Almost sounds like ‘We own you’.

Where’s the sense that we’re talking about human beings with hopes and fears, likes and dislikes, trust and doubts?

If you treat people like this in your language, it doesn’t bode well for how you treat them in your actions. Your words speak volumes about your attitudes. HR and management really need to learn this lesson.

Treat people like units of production and they’ll behave like one. They won’t think for themselves. They won’t take responsibility. They won’t care.

People matter. Units of production, talent, employees, skill, creatures with lifecycles – this is dehumanising language. And you need to treat your people in more human, more humane ways if you’re to hold on to them. Talk about people as people, and you might start getting somewhere.

Are you forgetting someone?

Imagine you’re round at someone’s house. They look up at the corner of the room and announce: ‘We provide a range of teas, including ordinary black tea, green tea and peppermint tea. Anyone who would like a cup of tea should let me know.’

Were they meant to be talking to you? Were they basically just saying ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

You’d think they were mad. But that’s how websites talk to people.

I’ve been looking at the websites of a lot of therapists and counsellors recently, as I have a client who is one of them. Remember, these are people who are trained to focus on other people’s needs. So it’s quite remarkable that the majority of their website home pages start by saying something like:

Hello, my name is Clare and am a trained interpersonal therapist with 7 years experience as a practitioner here in the UK. I am highly qualified in a range of modalities as well as interpersonal therapy, which is one of the most effective therapies for a range of conditions. I offer free consultations…

Hello, therapist? I’m out here. I’m waiting for you to notice me. I’m waiting for you to stop talking about yourself.

To be fair to therapists, so many organisations dedicated to helping people will also start by saying something like this:

We’re here to provide a listening ear for everyone who is facing emotional or other problems…

When they could have said, say:

Talk to us whenever you need to about whatever you need to…

And the therapist could have said:

If you’re suffering from anxiety or depression, talk to me. Interpersonal therapy could help you become happier and more confident…

It’s a simple switch of perspective, but it means the world. Instead of broadcasting messages about yourself or your organisation – effectively talking to the corner of the ceiling – you’re acknowledging the presence of another human being. You’re opening a conversation. You’re treating me with respect.

Of course, by talking to ‘you’ on your website you risk being presumptuous. You risk telling people who they are or what to think (a topic I’ll address another time). But by not addressing them, you risk making them feel as though they just don’t matter.

Which is a bit of a problem if your whole purpose is to help them.

Hype fatigue

I have just received an email with the subject line ‘5 Crazy-Effective Ways to Boost Landing Page Conversions’. I thought: ‘Crazy effective, really? Can that be true?’

After clicking on the link I reached a page with the headline 5 Super-Secret, Crazy Effective Ways to Get More Conversions from Your Landing Pages.

Wow.

So this information is not just Crazy Effective. No, it’s also Super-Secret. And I’m in on the Super-Secret!

The fact is, I clicked through because I was exasperated by the exaggeration. I wanted to see if these five ways to boost your landing pages were really that extraordinary – and I knew, from sad experience, that they wouldn’t in fact be crazy effective. Or, as we like to say in the UK, crazily effective.

Crazy/crazily is a pretty powerful intensifier, like its synonym insanely. It’s very now, very post social media. Sites like BuzzFeed make a habit of headlines like this. It’s part of the trend for headlines so colloquial they barely look written.

Instant example: Spotify Just Revealed Which Musical Artist Each State Plays The Most And I’m Kind Of Shocked. Love that ‘kind of’ there, just to make it even more colloquial and, you know, uncontrived. Whereas all those boring old media outlets like, let’s say, the Washington Post, continue to use old fashioned headlines that sound formal and accurate and outdated. Except that online papers like the Daily Telegraph are starting to follow the trend, and tabloids even more so.

Another BuzzFeed example: 26 Absolutely Perfect Ways For Millennials To Show How Old They Are. Did it really need to say ‘absolutely’ as well as perfect? Of course not. It’s a style. It’s a very conscious choice of tone of voice. Supposedly it’s how millennials talk, I guess. It’s certainly how many millennials write.

So hype is becoming normal in writing. We’re in a kind of exaggeration arms race.

But in business writing, like the email I just received, it can feel try-hard. Straining for effect. Desperate, even.

These people aren’t content with telling me that here are some tips for improving my landing pages. These aren’t even ‘killer’ tips. They’re Crazy Effective ones. And they’re also Super-Secret.

I’ve had enough of it. True, I clicked through from the email. But I didn’t go any further than the landing page I reached. Which was kind of ironic, seeing as it should have been Crazy Effective.

Businesses that want to be seen as credible should be careful which online styles they ape. Maybe we’ve reached peak hype. I’m certainly feeling hype fatigue, and I bet others are too.