As a writer, it’s sometimes difficult to get excited about a bit of writing – but you feel you have to. You want to give the client (and the user) the most exciting copy you can – full of lots of active words and attention-grabbing headlines.
Most of the time, if you can achieve that, it’s great. Before a user makes an action decision (by which I mean buying something, clicking a link, or downloading more information) they need to be engaged. You need to get past that initial scepticism and convince them that your product or service is what they want. You need to sell.
The game changes, though, once that decision is made. As soon as that is done the user’s priorities change – and what would previously excite them will now turn them off buying.
Sell me vs. serve me
A visitor to a website is either decided about making a buying decision – in which case the copy will have little impact (and the checkout button is the first thing they’ll be looking for) or they need convincing. If they need convincing, it’s all about the benefits – keeping everything positive and active.
The assumptions you make about your users will depend on what you’re selling – Amazon, for example, makes the assumption that users are coming with a book in mind and so present the dull details first. Their role is not to convince people to buy a book – which they’ve probably searched for by title anyway – but to confirm that they’re about to serve up the book the user already knew they wanted.
Apple, on the other hand, push the selling message heavily – because they want to up-sell. Users come to the site with a rough idea of a product – a laptop, an iPod, an accessory – and can be convinced which one to buy. Page order is very different – technical specs are pushed down the page in favour of pictures and emotional benefits.
It’s all about balance. Do the majority of users know exactly what they want – and just need to click “buy now”? Then confirm quickly what they’re looking at. Do the majority of users need convincing that your product is right for them? Then give them the sexy marketing spiel up front.
But always, always include both lots of information. I’m just talking page order, not what you should include in totality.
I’ve clicked. I’m buying. Stop selling.
The same principle carries through to your checkout procedure. Once a buying decision is made, giving a user more text – and getting wearingly excited about a product – is just going to turn the user off.
With a buying decision on a “boring” product – somthing necessary but dull, like insurance – users want to make the transaction as quickly as possible and then forget about it for another year. By all means tell me about the courtesy car, protected no-claims and free tax-disc holder before I buy – but when I’m buying, just let me get on with it.
It’s very tempting to keep the same tone of excitement and activity on the “mechanical” pages of a site but it’s best to aim for brevity – say what you need to in as many words as you need to. If you’ve never read it, now’s the time to get a copy of “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug – which is a fantastic book for helping you make a functional site. Everything after the checkout button needs to subscribe to Krug’s rules for simplicity.
Form vs. function
Web designers and writers are torn in very conflicting directions. We need to give our users what they want, but we also have to sell – it’s all about getting more people to a site, about selling a product, or about pushing someone’s decision a particular way. While the usability experts will tell us that brevity, simplicity and functionality are the only things to think about, there’s no getting away from our role as salespeople too.
Fulfilling these roles can be simplified down to one choice:
Buyer decided? Make it usable.
Decisions to be made? Make it sexy.