As an active Web user, you most likely fill out several forms online every day, at a minimum. Forms are how we interact online, and they’re very much a part of our personal and professional lives, like it or not.

So why, as ubiquitous as they are, do so many Web forms leave us feeling frustrated? Why do so many users abandon  a form before they’re finished filling it out? Why does Luke Wroblewski, the man who literally wrote the book on Web form design and usability, feel like he has the right to stand up in front of several hundred Web designers (as he did at An Event Apart in San Francisco last December) and tell us that our forms “look like a poo storm?”

Forms are everywhere, and most of them are ineffective at best, downright unusable at worst. Even veteran Web users struggle to fill them out sometimes. Wroblewski explains the convoluted process that often turns the horse into a hobbled camel: regardless of who initially designs the form, marketing, sales, and IT all have a stake in what it inevitably becomes, each adding their own touches and requirements to it. And often nobody is minding the store to make sure the final form achieves its primary goal: getting users to complete it.

Here are some tips – from Wroblewski’s AEA presentation as well as a couple of my own — for the next time you have to manage the design of a Web form:

1. Resist the urge to ask for every last detail. It’s understandable why it happens. The rare opportunity to get prospects to turn over information about themselves gets your salespeople and marketing teams salivating. But do you really need to ask for a person’s fax number? How about street address? What’s the least amount of information you can collect at this moment? People are more likely to fill out the form if they don’t have to labor over it. Consider each field and requested piece of information carefully before including it. And don’t forget to tell users how you’re planning to use the data, Wroblewski says — people won’t give you an email address or phone number if you’re planning to sell it to someone else or spam them repeatedly.
2. Think linearly. How does the user’s eyes move through the form? Chances are, they do not naturally jump back and forth between side-by-side fields. Users tend to scan down the left side of the page, so your form should be designed accordingly, Wroblewski says. If you do need to jump around, use strong visual cues to draw users’ eyes to where you want them to go next. And by all means, avoid placing the “Clear All” button where users expect the “Submit” button to be — the biggest faux pas of Web form design is to stick a button in a user’s natural flow that will wipe out all of their hard work instead of rewarding them. It’s quite possible they’ll be so disgusted that they won’t bother filling the form out again after that.
3. Don’t break with convention. Because we fill out so many of these things, we’ve all become very accustomed to the design standards of Web forms. Occasionally a talented interaction designer finds a way to tighten up space and give a form a truly unique look that also functions well. But often those who set out to build a better mousetrap fail in their attempts. Certain conventions work, so stick with them. For example, a trend is to place the field labels inside the fields. Designers also try placing them to the right or left, or underneath the field. But Wroblewski says studies show that users complete a form 10 times faster when the labels are placed above the field. Smart, thoughtful design is always welcome, but it’s not always necessary to innovate when a convention works perfectly.
4. Treat the form as a holistic experience. Users get to the form from someplace, and when they finish the form they expect to be taken someplace else. People who create forms sometimes forget this, and focus more on the form itself than on the entire user flow. When sending the user to the form, be careful to only make promises based on reality — let users know what to expect and exactly what they will get from filling out the form. If using a multiple-part form, consider using a progress indicator, and make sure it’s accurate. (Wroblewski uses Fidelity.com as an example of a four-step progress indicator bar that misleads users by failing to mention the requirement to create an account in the middle of filling out the form, a major disruption in the flow.) And by all means spend as much time considering the confirmation page and process as you do the actual form. Users want to know they were successful, and want to be able to do something next as an immediate reward for their efforts.
5. Use a writer. I’ve known some IT people who were great with words. Designers too. But much of the time, forms need content help. Instructions, labels and buttons often don’t communicate clearly what exactly users should do. Calls to action are unclear or nonexistent. And the opportunity to provide context-based help (such as pop-ups explaining what the information is for or why the company is requesting it) is often overlooked. An experienced Web writer can help you see the form from the user’s point of view and craft language that will make your form successful.

You know those brands that you really dig — that you feel you know so much about and relate to so viscerally that you’ll love them forever, like an old college roommate?

Like people, there probably aren’t many of those brands in your life. But the ones you’ve found you’re holding on to, and they continue to delight you with their ability to be there when you need them, to really get where you’re coming from.

Smart copywriting (combined with a great product presented in the right environment) is largely responsible for that fuzzy fondness you feel for a brand, especially when you interact with it online. That was the premise of Denise Wilton’s talk on “Writing for Relationships” at IxDA’s Interaction ‘10 in Savannah earlier this month. Wilton is the creative director of MOO.com, the wildly successful online printing company that has exploded among creatives and entrepreneurs for their fun design options and easy-to-use system.

But a large part of MOO.com’s success, Wilton asserts, is its ability to create a tangible brand online, where customers don’t have the luxury of interacting with a face-to-face salesperson but still crave the same kind of friendly service they’d get at bricks-and-mortar store. (And, in a world where live employees are MIA most of the time at physical retail stores anyway, there’s a real opportunity to deliver superior experiences even when your salespeople are chatty bots following well-crafted scripts.)

In fact, Wilton talks about Little MOO — the friendly bot who sends automated updates about the status of a customer’s business card order — and how people react to it: replying to it, sending email asking how Little MOO is feeling, treating Little MOO like a real relationship. The way Little MOO and all of the copy on MOO.com is crafted fosters relationships with consumers who feel like they know the brand intimately.

Wilton argues against all the people who say users don’t read online. “People read online all the time,” she says. But copy has to be targeted, useful and authentic, or users will indeed skip over it. “We know people only read what’s necessary online,” she says. “We have to make every single word count.”

Relationship-building through smart writing

• Lead customers from the monologue to the conversation. Web pages start out as monologues — you’re telling customers what they need to know. But once you make a sale, or two or three or ten sales, you can begin engaging customers in real conversations, through blogs, Twitter feeds and email newsletters. The tone of voice can be a little different in these communications — more casual, more intimate, maybe even more brand-focused or inward-looking — because you’ve formed a relationship and people start to care, to want to join the tribe. Until then, keep the information useful and strictly audience-focused.
• Figure out what your business is all about. “Are you selling online banking, or are you selling more time to spend with your kids?” Wilton says. “Before you work out your tone of voice, you have to work out what you’re really doing with your business.” A writer who is able to create a tangible, lovable brand voice through copy knows what the brand’s all about, inside and out — and it’s a hard thing to teach that to others, Wilton says.
• Write for context. In the spirit of making every word count, provide copy that truly supports the sales process — avoiding gratuitous prose. “Context is everything! Otherwise you’re just the annoying shop assistant,” Wilton says.

See Wilton’s entire presentation here.

“A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.” – The Wizard, Oz

“I hate our Web site.”

That’s how many of my projects begin. A client calls, in a tizzy and in a rush. The company’s or the program’s Web site (in the client’s words) sucks, and the client is finally sick of it.

At first glance, the site may be (but is not always) nice-looking, with cool graphics, an attractive color palette. But try using it. Try reading it. Try navigating it and wading through content once you get a few levels down, where the interface design devolves from lovely and engaging to mucky and clumsy. Frustrated yet? So are the client’s customers.

The client wants a redesign, pronto. A “facelift,” they may call it. A “makeover.” At this point, it’s my job to back everyone up and analyze why the Web site does indeed “suck.” And almost always, the answer is crystal-clear: the site has no content strategy.

It doesn’t just need a facelift. It needs a heart and a soul.

Bandwagons, start your engines
At this point let me say that by even writing this post I feel like I’m jumping into the content strategy parade that is taking the Web world by storm this year. Fueled by the publication of the book Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson, content strategy is the discipline du jour. It’s the subject of blog posts and Tweets (search for the hashtag #contentstrategy), online groups, and programming at popular Web events such as SxSW. Content strategy is even getting its very own annual conference, debuting this April in Paris, France (and I am proud to say I have forked over the euros to attend).

The world doesn’t need another blog post about content strategy. But over the past several months I’ve made the decision to shift the focus of my business to this important discipline, as the foundation for all of the Web project work I do. I haven’t quite perfected my elevator pitch to friends and family about this change — it isn’t easy to explain Web content strategy to people who don’t live in the Web world — but I do want to explain to my clients and peers why this focus is important to me — and to them.

Content strategy essentially combines everything I’ve already been doing in my work: using business strategy to drive Web content, site architecture, user experience, design and functionality. The difference is that the content strategy comes first, and that the entire process of a site design begins with a well-developed plan for what content should be featured on a site, based on a company’s strategy, goals, audience needs and position in the competitive landscape. The content strategy then drives all other decision-making: information architecture, UX and UI design, functionality, even the choice of a company’s content management system.

What content strategy is, and what it isn’t
There’s more to it than this of course. A true content strategy has to do with not only what the content should be, but where it’s coming from, who’s authoring it, and how it will be managed post-launch. It may include an editorial strategy, an editoral calendar, a style guide. It’s an end-to-end plan for content — rare in a world where content has long been the most-often-neglected element as well as the one that’s hardest to wrestle to the ground in any Web project.

There are hot debates across the Internet about what exactly content strategy entails (some people believe it’s more about classifying and organizing content than about managing it going forward, for example — everyone seems to have a variation on the definition).

And as with any “awakening” in a community, the clamor for content strategy has led to a great number of misunderstandings and misinterpretations among people whose hearts are in the right place but who are repurposing “content strategy” to their own end. I recently read an article that detailed “10 content strategies for 2010,” which included “launch an email newsletter” and “write some white papers” in its list. No. Those are things that may come out of a strong content strategy, but they are not in themselves content strategy.

Kristina Halverson herself course-corrected hungry content strategy disciples on her company’s blog a couple of weeks ago, reinforcing the true definition of content strategy:

Content strategy is a plan to get you from where you are now with your current content (assets, operations, distribution, maintenance, and so on), to where you want to be. But for some reason, we want to skip that part and rush ahead to the execution piece. Which is why we tend to mix up content strategy … with tactics.

Content strategy is the reason for having a Web
The Web is content. People forget that. It’s the entire reason for the Web in the first place. The nature of that content has changed; now content can be text and video and audio and animation and interaction. But it’s still content. People don’t come to the Web for design. They come to solve a problem, to complete a transaction, to learn something, to find entertainment. That involves content in one form or another.

When companies decide to launch a Web site, they know they need a Web presence. They have a sense of what they want to communicate. They know they want something attractive and engaging that wins prospective customers over to their side. Maybe they want a shopping cart, or an online forum, or a cool interactive Flash. They think about content enough to determine what pages they might want, in order to complete an information architecture and build the site framework and navigation. But they don’t think about the guts of the site ahead of time. And therein lies the problem.

As Kristina Halvorson eloquently describes in her book, content development almost always comes in the final one-third of a Web project — after the IA, after the wireframes, after the user testing, after the visual design, after the CMS has been selected and almost completely implemented. What happens next is classic: a Web writer (and how many times I have been that writer!) or a cross-functional team of contributors comes along with a bunch of Word docs. An SEO specialist slaps on some keywords (and the writer rewrites to make the copy search engine-friendly, often rendering it human-unfriendly, but that’s a topic for another post). A content producer copies and pastes Word copy into the CMS and proofreads it for funny characters and formatting.

Launch day. The site looks great! But over time the cracks begin to show. Content is confusing, repetitive, incomplete, inconsistent or dull. It’s also really hard to find. And did I mention out of date? The online forum has a bunch of spam comments. The blog hasn’t been updated in three months. The Web site, quite simply, sucks.

What you get with content strategy
Starting with the guts means you’re starting with the heart and soul of a site, the why and how. What are our goals, and what content helps us achieve them? How do we execute content in a way to meet our specific goals?

Just as example: a company wishes to distinguish itself as a thought leader in its niche. How do we do that? Do we have a truly distinctive voice to bring to the table, a unique point of view and proprietary knowledge that we can share? How can we offer it up in a way that’s engaging, and to what end are we doing so? How do we put the resources in place to sustain our approach over time?

What you get with content strategy is the foundation for a rewarding customer experience that communicates your company’s or organization’s value while meeting your strategic goals. If it’s done right, here’s what that looks like:

• Your site tells a multifaceted, but cohesive, story about who you are, what you’re all about, how you’re different and what users can or should do next — from home page to deepest-darkest detail page.
• Your site design leads users to the most important content and functions, while empowering them to find the content they want the most.
• Your site provides valuable information to users who will come to see it as a go-to source for decision-making, professional enrichment, problem-solving tools, or whatever other purpose your content serves.
• Your site delivers what it promises to deliver. Enough said.

By the way, content strategy isn’t just for Web sites. It’s for your entire online presence, including social media platforms you’re managing. If you’re trying to answer the question “Should we be on Twitter?”, you’re asking the wrong question. Content strategy governs everything you publish online, and content across platforms should be inextricably linked.

I have so much more to learn, and 2010 is my year of immersing myself in content strategy and user experience by attending conferences, reading everything I can my hands on, listening to podcasts and meeting others who are as passionate about this discipline as I am.

But suffice it to say that my focus on content strategy will be a good thing for my clients. At An Event Apart in San Francisco recently, programming guru Jeff Veen declared, “We can make more Web!” Which is great. But in partnership with my clients and with content strategy at our backs, I’m hoping to make better Web.

Recently I conducted my first-ever post-mortem at the end of a long Web site redesign project. The post-mortems in which I’d participated in the past were half-hearted affairs, with a tendency to become mired in finger-pointing and nit-picky details. In this post-mortem, my client and I wanted to examine what went both right and wrong and apply those learnings to future projects. So many times after a project we’re all off and running on the next thing. This was an unusual chance to pause and reflect on everything we’d accomplished together over many months.

Admittedly, I was nervous. As the consultant, you always worry that there are unspoken dissatisfactions waiting to storm out of the closet if given the invitation. What if I had misread the success of the project, and the client was just waiting to pounce on me? But there was no pouncing. Our fortune was that we had a small, collaborative team, a few smart cooks in a very large kitchen, and we’d all worked together unusually well  — it was one of the great successes of the project. We knew each other well enough to be candid without needing to finger-point. Because of that, we could focus on an open discussion that led to many good discoveries.

Our post-mortem methodology
Before the two-hour session, I distributed a somewhat in-depth questionnaire to the team and asked them to review it. Part 1 used a 1-5 ranking system and focused on the different phases of the project. Team members were asked to rate to what extent they agreed with statements about each phase: “The discovery phase effectively informed the remainder of the project” or “Enough resources were allotted for the visual design phase.” Part II focused on success factors — teamwork, communications, etc. — and asked open-ended questions about what we did right and wrong in each area to facilitate discussion.

Rather than complete the questionnaires, team members used them as a guide to prepare for the discussion. Then we walked through each area and used the questions as a way to talk about what worked and didn’t work. At the end of the discussion, I put together a short summary of our discussion with recommendations for the future.

What we learned
It’s easy to believe that the “learnings” from a project should have already emerged after nearly a year of meetings, emails and impromptu discussions. But a focused, two-hour reflection as a team can really help to crystallize some of these discoveries into a few beautiful lightbulb moments.

Of course, we focused heavily on time and resources. I wish we’d had more time or I wish we’d had more people to help were the most-often repeated phrases during our two-hour session. These were legitimate wishes: certain phases of the project were rushed, and in some areas the burden fell on a couple of already overworked individuals. But in Web site redesigns, these complaints are par for the course. I’ve worked on redesigns that involved one person and hundreds of people, projects with $0 budgets and $2 million budgets. There’s never enough time. There’s never enough money.

But there were a few fundamental things that emerged that could have made the project more successful in spite of the time and money constraints. Here were a few of our major a-ha’s.

Requirements should become before budget. The budget-first, requirements-gathering later method rarely works. Unfortunately, it’s usually the way things are done in corporate environments, because budgeting is usually completed the year before a project can kick off. It is the way of things. But what happens is that rash decisions are made in the spirit of thriftiness — and declarations such as, “our design will be really simplistic, we won’t need that many templates” or “we can do all the content and production in-house, that’s why we have a full-time editor” can mean major danger down the road. If planning for a Web site redesign, try scheduling your discovery phase in one fiscal year, then use it to inform a realistic budgeting process for the actual design and development of the site in the next fiscal year.

Content should come first. This has been the biggest lightning bolt for me this year, and the reason that I am refocusing my entire business toward Web content strategy. What happened during this particular Web project was what almost always happens: we scheduled the content development phase for the latter third of the project, and because of lack of resources, it actually got pushed to the last fifth of the project or so. One person, in-house, was responsible for writing or cleaning up all the content, because budget for a resource to help had been one of the first things to be slashed in the project planning. But inevitably, we started to have problems as soon as we began wireframing and visual design. As the site development progressed, it became apparent that we hadn’t planned for “real” content in our page designs, resulting in having to go back to the drawing board a few times to get it just right, and still having to tweak as we were building pages near project launch. Nightmare, right? But it’s all too common — and the reason why content should be planned carefully and at least partially developed before beginning page design. I’ll be writing more about this in future posts.

Testing is good. More testing is better. I was awfully proud of our team for embracing the idea that user testing, done early, was essential and could save the entire project. And though we were crunched for time and money, we built a prototype and testing our site design, IA and navigation with a handful of users right as we were still working out visual design and before we coded anything, a move that would make Steve Krug proud. But during the post-mortem, the IT lead on the project suggested he would have benefited from testing again, later on, once the site was really working. A complex new registration process, combined with a brand new prompt for members to log in to read certain content, meant a whole new experience for site users — and made our IT folks quake in their boots before launch. Everything ended up working smoothly, but later testing would have assured us a flawless transition and helped us address any potential bumps in the road.

Recognize when schedule slippage may compromise quality. This is a tough one, because in Web redesigns there’s always a “drop-dead” launch date toward which we’re working. The dirty secret is that a site very rarely actually launches on that target date. That’s because in a project this complex, dozens of variables come in to play, and each participant must complete each task on time, or the entire project slips. When one piece is delayed, other pieces are compromised. Along the way, we all work toward the supposedly non-negotiable end, so often when the schedule slips we make the decision to make it work, to speed up the next task in line in order to make the launch — compromising the quality of the pieces that follow. In our case, when IA took four weeks instead of two because of the amount of feedback we received, we found ourselves rushing through wireframes so we could hand off design more quickly to our production vendor — but in the end that rush delayed us anyway, because we had to go back and do it right. It’s better to recognize when we need more time and realistically evaluate whether we might need to push back launch accordingly — rather than waiting until the last minute to decide to delay the go-live.

Even though each one of us was already out of the frying pan and into the fire after launch, it was so refreshing to take some time revisit the project as a whole and reflect on how we did. It was an unusual opportunity to celebrate our overall success, but also to dissect the areas where we stumbled and understand why. After all, isn’t every project just another learning experience and chance to keep growing professionally?

The guys over at the Marketing Over Coffee podcast a few weeks ago were talking about a report released on the SEOmozBlog about how to attain the perfectly optimized Web page for optimum search engine rankings.

As more and more companies focus on SEO techniques to achieve higher search engine rankings, the report served as an exhaustive list of proven tricks, as well as a debunking of myths. (Example: the page title and keyword location are critical; the H1 tag and boldface type are not.) It’s a fascinating analysis of all the different elements that go into helping a site attain the Holy Grail of top rankings.

But perhaps the most telling revelation, and the one on which the podcasters focused was SEOmoz’s ranking of the top six most important SEO practices. The No. 1 ranked practice, not surprisingly was “accessibility” — the ability of users and search engines to crawl your site.

But coming in a close second was content — the quality of the content. When your Web content is good, it not only attracts visitors, but it incites a viral sharing of the information, which results in high link conversions — defined by SEOmoz as “the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing.”

It’s a reminder that companies need to place a strong emphasis on strategic, quality content that meets users’ needs and piques their interest. As the Marketing Over Coffee podcasters summarized:

All these different search engines that are now focusing on real-time and social are driven solely by whether you have something that’s worth linking to. If you don’t, no amount of tricks are going to save you. Even if the page is perfectly optimized with all the SEO tricks you could possibly imagine, if you can’t get the eyeballs to come … if it’s not a honeypot, you’re not going to get anything out of it.

Is your Web site content a honeypot? If not, consider repurposing the time and money you’re spending on search engine optimization activities and going back to the drawing board with your Web site content strategy — to deliver rich, alluring sweets for your users and naturally excellent results for your search engine rankings.

We’ve all seen examples of bloated, jargon-heavy marketing copy that makes our eyes roll into the backs of our heads. Seeing it out of context from the Web site or brochure that is its normal habitat, called out as an example of lazy, long-winded space-filler, makes us laugh.

We laugh as the consumers of such copy — the intended audience digesting message after message about “state-of-the-art solutions.” And we laugh as copywriters — because at one time or another, we have been guilty of churning out that kind of drivel to make a paycheck.

But even copy that is punchy and interesting to read is in danger of falling in to the same trap as copy laden with generic marketing-speak. Polished, creative copy with real rhythm and personality may go a long way to helping express a company’s brand, but a true prospect or customer will see right through it if it doesn’t deliver the right substance. At the end of the day, your audience is there in front of you, ready to receive the single most important thing they need to learn: what’s in it for me?

What are you going to tell them?

Let the games begin
I think back to my journalism school days when we learned to write news articles with the 5Ws (and the less convenient “H”) — what, who, where, when, why and how. In newspaper ledes, we were told that the most important were the first four Ws, the pure facts. The “why” and the “how” were nice-to-haves in short, factual news stories, but the basic facts were most important.

Marketing and sales people tend to begin sales presentations, brochures and Web pages with the most obvious “Ws” — typically, the “what” and “who.” They may dedicate a half-dozen upfront slides or begin with a few paragraphs to describe what the company does. (For many large companies, it is so hard to consolidate this into a single pithy statement that the description ends up saying nothing at all.) Then the content speaks to how long the company been in business and who its customers are, maybe offers up an org chart or summary of fiscal earnings. This is all meant as an introduction, a way to establish credibility. But:

So what? The customer doesn’t really care about your company. The customer cares about himself or herself — and how you can help him or her succeed.

Perhaps, instead, you start out by talking about what the product (sorry, the “solution”) does:

The Best Solution Ever™ is a patent-pending, innovative business productivity solution that is part of an award-winning, comprehensive suite of information technology solutions designed to improve processes and save money.

You’re explaining what the product is (vaguely), what it does at a high level, and the fact that your company took the time to file a patent on the technology behind it. And the prospective customer asks once again:

So what? It all sounds nice, but what does it really mean for me?

How about if you approach it a little differently? Maybe your copy can put a little context around why customers need a solution to all their many problems:

Times are tough. Sales are down. Your business can’t get as much financing as it used to. To succeed, you need to be more productive. The Best Solution Ever™ gives you the ability to do more with less, increasing staff productivity while saving time and reducing costs.

Hmmm. You’ve piqued my interest. I’m listening, and you’re right. But — so what? Why are you the people to solve my problem?

You’ve hooked the prospect. You’ve overcome the initial incredulousness. But how many companies out there can say the exact same thing you’re saying?

Three strikes!  But don’t give up
In a sales presentation or live marketing copy, you’d be out by now. The prospect will have tuned out and moved on.

But because we’re just experimenting here, you’re still in the game. Let’s try this one more time. Consider these four principles as you consider how to begin your marketing pitch:

1. It’s all about the 5th W and the H. This isn’t newspaper writing. The basic facts — the what, who, where and why — are important, but they shouldn’t lead the story. In fact, they should possibly be relegated to proof points. You want to lead with why and how — why do you provide the best solution, and how can you help the customer?
2. Walk in the customer’s shoes. Remember that, while you’re most likely very proud that your company has been in business for 25 years, won a major award two years ago and has offices in 17 different cities, the customer doesn’t care. All that stuff provides confidence that you’re not going to disappear off the map in two years — but the customer needs primarily to know that you provide a product that does 95% of what he or she needs it to do, does it in a way that nobody else can provide, and will actually change the customer’s day-to-day reality. You’re dealing with an impatient audience who is seriously overwhelmed with information, so you have to find a way to convey that quickly and succinctly in a way that resonates with the reader.
3. Address specific results. Several weeks ago I participated in an all-day workshop by Corporate Visions, a company that specializes in helping corporations turn their brand messaging into sales-ready communications. One of their strategies is to think about the specific audience — the decision-makers or influencers whom salespeople most often approach or who will be doing the majority of the research about new solutions — and what keeps those people up at night. Yes, ultimately they want to “increase staff productivity and save money,” or “increase quality,” or whatever the high-level benefits touted in marketing copy may be. But what they really care about is being able to report to their bosses in their next weekly status meetings that they’re on budget, that their teams are producing results, that the work that they’re doing is tangibly making a difference.
4. Call out what’s different. This is one of the hardest things for companies to do. In branding and marketing departments across the world, very experienced marketers spend a lot of energy coming up with value propositions that are truly distinctive from the competition, especially in B2B spaces where there are four or five clear leaders in a category. The challenge also is to do this in a way that’s not overtly confrontational by stating explicitly that your solution is best — because there’s always somebody out there who can find some fact to dispute that. You need to set yourself apart right from the start, but in a way that doesn’t seem like you’re looking for a fight.

Driving it home
So, using these principles, I took a shot at writing marketing copy for our fictitious software solution:

Simple to use and easy to adopt, The Best Solution Ever™ lets workers collaborate on projects, automate contact management and track tasks — without installing costly, burdensome software that absorbs IT resources. Built with unique technology that lets employees work together simultaneously on a project or account from multiple locations, The Best Solution Ever helps companies more effectively meet deadlines, close leads faster and improve departmental productivity by as much as 75%.

How is this copy different? Notice that:

• The copy talks about what the software does, but from the customer’s perspective — it immediately addresses what customers can do with it, rather than how it works or what it is.
• The differentiators are woven into the copy, calling out how the product is distinctive (it’s an ASP, it has an intuitive interface) while subtly referencing some of the biggest pain points customers may experience with other types of business productivity software: it’s difficult to use, employees think it’s hard so don’t adopt it, and it sucks IT resources.
• It describes the true market differentiator, the “patent-pending” collaboration technology, by talking about how it actually makes a difference.
• It references real, everyday benefits — the stuff that on-the-ground salespeople and managers care about. And it relies on customer case studies or research to put some proof behind the sweeping statement that the software helps “increase productivity.”

Prospective customers are overwhelmed with navel-gazing, bloated marketing copy. They’re jaded. Get past their filters by beginning the conversation focused on real needs and real results — and hit a grand slam with your marketing copy every time.

A few weeks ago my favorite usability guru issued an Alertbox reminding communicators of the importance of always maintaining context when writing Web content:

Writing for the Web differs because various users might approach a given piece of content in different ways … In some of these scenarios, users see only a small portion of the content displayed out of context. They might, for example, see only a headline, or perhaps a headline, summary, and a thumbnail photo.

This concept recently demonstrated itself in my own life when I signed up for InstaPaper. I have probably 200 different publications and blogs that I really like to read regularly, but unfortunately my days are so crammed with client deadlines that taking the time to peruse a long and thoughtful article or blog entry about a topic I’m interested in is a pure luxury. I’ve used Bloglines for years to manage RSS feeds for all the blogs, but unfortunately I’m guilty of letting my Bloglines feeds fill up and remain unread (it’s not unusual for some of the more prolific ones, like Boing Boing and TechCrunch, to hit the max of 200 feeds and stay there for weeks).

My husband recently introduced me to InstaPaper. It’s similar to delicious in the way that you can capture articles to read later, which was always my second step after finding an article I wanted to read in more depth in my RSS feeds. With InstaPaper, though, once you grab the article, you can instantly load it into an iPhone app, where the entire article appears and can be read offline at anytime.

So just to review:

An article about, say, electronic medical records that I want to read on The New York Times‘ Web site, would be carefully presented when it appears on its primary site. A catchy blurb and thumbnail on the site’s home page would draw in readers. An intelligently written headline and subhead, along with callouts, might entice readers to read further. Design-wise, photographs are strategically placed, along with captions, to help guide the eye. The entire article appears in the selected NYT online typeface. Ads appear as they are intended, to draw readers interested in similar topics but to avoid being so intrusive as to annoy readers. Related articles of interest are listed to the side so readers can easily jump to other places they’d like to explore. The experience is carefully controlled.

Then: I pull the article into Bloglines. The original headline and a blurb from the article (sometimes just the first few lines or paragraph) are the only things working to encourage me to read further. Photos may appear, but it’s often hard to predict where they’ll show up, and captions don’t always come with them.

I click the headline to be taken to the NYT site, where I can definitely dive in to the article in its original intended form — except I don’t have time to read it right now. Later. Mañana. I click my “Read Later” InstaPaper bookmark button on my browser toolbar and InstaPaper captures the article. Later, while waiting in line at the bank, I fire up my iPhone, refresh my InstaPaper app, and I see this:

The mobile version of InstaPaper articles take you back to the Web circa 1995 — all text, blue links, the most basic of HTML. You don’t see images, you see image ALT tags (so don’t forget how important those ALT tags can be!). Banner ads that flow with the text on the original site show up as ALT tag text in the middle of an article, sometimes disruptively. And only some of the supporting text shows up; captions, related articles, subheads, callouts and other elements often get lost in translation.

It makes me think about how we can often be dismissive of the need to “design for mobile,” especially these days when devices such as the iPhone have Web browsers that typically present sites the way they were originally intended. But the more important thing is that it’s important to always keep in mind that readers may be seeing your content in many different ways — and that it may change hands, and formats, many times between its original posting and a reader’s experience with it.