Archive for category customer engagement
Are we grunting online?
Posted by admin in audience engagement, branding, copywriting, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, online language, search engine usage, web content, web copywriting training on February 26, 2009
Reading University researchers have developed a computer programme that has identified the words “I”, “we”, and the numbers “1″, “2″ and “3″ as some of the oldest still in use.
With them I could, apparently, communicate with a prehistoric ancester. I couldn’t discuss the current “global economic meltdown” (see my ealier post on Armegeddon language) but I could manage, maybe: “I hungry, need 3 helpings of roast Mastodon. We hunt now!”.
The researchers are also predicting which words are likely to become extinct, citing “squeeze”, “guts”, “stick” and “bad” as those most likely to become obsolete first (according to a BBC article on the project).
This means the sentence: “I had some bad sushi last night and I feel like my guts are being squeezed out through my bottom, so I’ll stick to dry toast for lunch” will, one day, have no meaning.
This story has thrown my morning out of wack because I’m now obsessing about what enables some words to thrive while others do not? I can see the importance of being able to identify myself (I), creating alliances (we) and basic numbers (1, 2, 3). Does that mean usefulness is the key to language longevity? If so, are the words which die out (or are on their last legs), words which are no longer useful?
Or is it to do with the fact that we have better / alternative words? Is ‘guts’ going because ‘stomach’ or ‘entrails’ are more accurate alternatives?
And what influence, if any, does the medium of delivery have on a word’s viability? Are some words less viable because they are open to misenterpretation when skimmed at speed online, for example? And are words liable to die out through overuse. (In which case, please let ‘Welcome’ go first. THE most overused word on the internet.)
According to the Reading researchers, the less frequently certain words are used, the more likely they are to be replaced.
Other simple rules have been uncovered – numerals evolve the slowest, then nouns, then verbs, then adjectives. Conjunctions and prepositions such as ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’ , ‘on’, ‘over’ and ‘against’ evolve the fastest, some as much as 100 times faster than numerals.
The evolution of language interests CDA. It was one of the driving forces behind our recent language pathways white paper. I’m firmly convinced that the way we engage with language has been profoundly changed by screen-based media and this in turn is influencing language and its evolution.
Which all begs the question: have we reached a pivot point where the way we create language and meaning is changing and at an ever increasing speed? (Think about younger age groups and txt (sic) messaging and how quickly their new ‘rules’ were widely accepted.)
And what does this mean for people like me?
I think this Reading research is going to keep me awake tonight.
Eager to know more?
Radio 4 interview with Professor Mark Pagel about the research
Why men look twice at prospective mothers-in-law
Posted by admin in audience engagement, customer engagement, digital marketing, email communication, online communication, online language, web content on February 9, 2009
It’s an old, very old and rather chauvinist gag, but the idea is that you should always look at the mother of the woman you plan to marry because that’s what your wife will look like in 25 years time. I suspect that if women looked at their prospective fathers-in-law the same way marriage would have died out some time ago. But let me get to the point…
Sometimes you really need to take the long view. If your plan is to have and to hold until death do you part then take a 25-year perspective.
But, if you looking at digital platforms and functionality – how far ahead should you future proof?
- What do you need to send out an email campaign for your business right now, or in a year’s time?
- What functionality does your web platform need for it to support your business right now – or in 2 year’s time?
- What length of contract are you (or should you be) signing? What’s the deal if you break it?
Apparently marriages don’t last as long as they did, so maybe the mother-in-law test is no longer valid. It certainly doesn’t make sense if you’re doing digital. Why think even 5 years if you know you’re going to want to change in 3?
The beauty of the digital arena is the speed and fludity of it all. New advances are being made and new insights are being gleaned every day. Stay light on your feet, so you can take advantage.
Instead of getting married to the delivery platform, think instead about the conversation you want to have and who you want to have that conversation with. Don’t be boring and only think of customers… or prospects. Think about knowledge seekers, detractors, distractors, advocates… Heck, if you find the right sweet words you can get married to them all.
Welcome to web content 101
Posted by admin in audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, copywriting, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, online language, web content, web copywriting training on January 29, 2009
They say that fish don’t know what water is because they swim in it. Content is the same. We swim in it and therefore don’t really think about it. After all, we all have reasonable writing skills, which we employ effortlessly in everything from writing a Post It note through to creating a huge website.
But how you employ content online is a very specific harnessing of your writing skills. Users don’t hold it at arm’s length and read it. They are immersed in it as part of a deeply personal, interactive experience. Online content is the environment for web users. They may not even be aware of it – ‘Oooh look, there’s some content on that page!’ – but without it (just like the fish swimming in water) they couldn’t get where they want to go.
I recently gave an interview to Dave Chaffey about the essential issues a print copywriter has to consider when writing for the web. Dave is an author, consultant and trainer specialising in e-commerce and e-marketing education and guidance. The interview’s now up on his website. Take a look and come back to me with any comments.
If you’ve arrived at the CDA Content Lab from my interview on davechaffey.com, please take a look around. You may find the links below particularly useful as they cover the topics mentioned in the interview:
Online language pathways (on main CDA site / opens in new window)
More on personas and scenarios for web and email (this blog / opens in same window)
Can I also draw you attention to:
Auditing for websites and email (CDA main website / opens in new window)
Web copywriting workshops and training (CDA main website / opens in new window)
All of us here at the lab have a huge respect for Dave and his site is a valuable resource. If I was going to point you to one thing on it would be his e-business book, which will help you develop a robust strategy for improving e-business and IT activities.
Dave Chaffey’s e-business and e-commerce management book (davechaffey.com / opens in new window)
Beware your website doesn't blow up in your face
Posted by admin in audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, digital marketing on January 26, 2009
I hate tricksy titles or descriptions. A spade is a spade not an ‘earth and debris relocator’. Often names are designed to make little ideas seem bigger than they are. Some product names are just plain silly, such as the Ford Probe, probably so named because there are still agencies out there who think the best way to market a sporty car is by cross referencing a gent’s tackle. The possible exception to the keep it simple rule is anything to do with chocolate bars, where you can get positive galactic – to wit Milky Way, Galaxy or, my personal favourite, the Mars bar.
But creative agency Hoop Associates have coined a term that I’m warming to, even if it did originally conjure up images of World War II films starring frightfully British actors defusing doodle bugs with nothing more that a pair of plyers and a packet of Players cigarettes.
Hoop use the term UXB, the acronym for Unexploded Bomb and have applied it to User eXperience Branding (UXB). The basic premise is that, online, user experience and brand experience are the same thing. For example, the experience you have when searching for something on an organisation’s website is an experience that strongly influences what you think about that organisation (and its brand). At CDA we talk about usefulness being the language of brand online. The Content Lab’s re-definition of UXB might be Useful eXperience = Brand.
Websites have to be useful because they’re dealing with a very different kettle of fish (or bucket of customers) from a printed brochure or DM campaign. People are passive recipients of this traditional offline messaging. Online users are active and dynamic. They’ve gone online to do something and they will judge all online encounters by how well this ‘do’ is enabled. The start for any website communication is responding to user action. Here in the lab we also talk about reply-focussed communication, the subject of another posting on this blog.
So we like where Hoop are coming from on this one. We’re also aware that there are still plenty of businesses out there who are pouring fortunes into their online presence (even in the current climate) but who have created websites from the perspective of what they want to say and sell and not what users want to read and do. And if that blows up in their faces – they only have themselves to blame.
Read more from CDA about usefulness as the language of brand
And Hoop Associates answer the question – what the heck is UXB?
Right, I’m off for a Mars bar.
Have you just clicked through from our newsletter?
Posted by admin in audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, online language, research whitepaper, search engine usage, user analysis, web content on January 21, 2009
If the answer to the above question is ‘yes’, can I say ‘hi’ and thank you for popping in. Take a look around – you’ll find a list of past posts in the right hand column and you can also search our archive.
If you haven’t received a copy of CDA’s enewsletter, It’s Only Words, I suggest you sign up now.
We send it out 3 or 4 times a year and it contains useful information, best practice tips and free downloads of valueto anyone using online communication for business.
Sign up right now and get the latest edition, which speaks about the latest release of our new whitepaper on internet search. The findings impact on the way all businesses should go about creating effective (and profitable) web content. You can also download our whitepaper for free AND the latest research dealing with online customer engagement.
2009 – the year for doing digital
Posted by admin in branding, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication on January 13, 2009
Businesses are falling over like nine pins. Banks are going to the wall. Currencies are going down the toilet. We’re all going to the hot place in a hand basket. Are we? Nah. But we are going digital.
This is the year that businesses finally get what digital media is all about. They may be driven there by a desperate desire to save a buck but they’ll stay because the responsiveness of the medium will seduce them into staying.
This is the year that you’ll either reach digital maturity or get relegated to the the box under the bed of life that also contains the 8-track cartride players, video recorders and whalebone corsets. Useful, even pleasureable in their day but now…
Take the new TV ad’ campaign from Confused.com in the UK. This price comparison site is using the ease of use of its new website as the hook for the entire campaign.
You’d think that the hook would have to be price but no. Price is so 2008. Yes, people want to save money but not if they’ve got to wrestle some clunky old website to the ground. Where Confused goes the rest of us will follow.
The campaign uses real customers who record their own You Tube reviews. Apparently, the new adverts were created in-house in collaboration with Wordley Production Partners. Respect.
Ho Ho Click Whirr
Posted by admin in customer engagement, online language, research whitepaper, search engine usage on December 19, 2008
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
Or, to put it another way: festival winter soon, economic input headgear.
CDA have just finished a research project looking at how people search and ‘find’ things online and how the process of search alters the language they use.
Most importantly, it looks at the implications for organisations who want to engage with these searchers and the language needed on their destination websites.
As a Christmas present, I’m delighted to offer visitors to the content lab a copy of the whitepaper - featuring research that takes a closer look at how people use language to search online and what that tells brands about the way they need to communicate.
Merry Christmas and enjoy.
Personas grata
Posted by admin in branding, customer engagement, online communication, online language, user analysis on December 8, 2008
The internet, the web, the online… thingy can be likened to a teenager. It’s all about peer pressure and fitting in. (I haven’t quite figured out what the internet equivalent of spots is yet, but I suspect it has something to do with your server eating 1-in-50 emails and visiting websites that want to dump 20 cookies on you before delivering up anything useful.)
Teenagers also have their own language and regularly adopt words in weird combinations in order to keep parents and other ancient adults out of the loop. Yep. Very much like the web then.
Which is why, frequently, you feel that every article, white paper and blog is running with a very limited vacabulary. Do you remember the early days when it was all ‘super highway’ this and ‘super highway’ that? It wasn’t that long ago that ‘the digital space’ became the synonym for online. If you’re you still using ‘the digital space’ I’d stop now if I were you. It’s so, like, yesterday.
So, where am I going with all this? Well, the big word is currently, in my humble opinion, ‘personas’. If you want to get down with the digital posse you need personas, brand personas, multiple personas… Your digital strategy isn’t worth doo doo unless you’ve got a few personas to back it up.
Don’t get me wrong. I love personas. CDA loves personas. In fact we’ve got a half day internal workshop about them tomorrow (which is why the subject is so front of mind). But personas are not a miracle cure. You can focus the mind wonderfully by using them but you have to ‘employ’ them. It’s not enough to simply have personas on the payroll.
We always talk about your website being your most important and expensive employee. Your website probably costs more to maintain than your CEO but it would be cheap at twice the price.
How many people does you CEO meet in a year? How many times does he, or she, get to truly demonstrate what your brand is?
Your website is out there 24 hours every day, being reached by people all over the world. Hopefully it’s the living embodiment of your brand; demonstrating usefulness to everyone that comes into contact with it. If the previous description doesn’t sound like your organisation’s website, for goodness sake get a grip. You can’t have a rubbish website in the current economic climate.
Well personas should be right up there on the payroll. They should be getting great benefits packages, including top of the range medical insurance. They should have corner offices and every lunchtime the CEO should rush down to get them sushi from that great Japanese restaurant on the next block. Love your personas. But make them work hard.
If created well and treated with respect, personas bring the real world into your organisational netherspace. You can destil the key attributes of hundreds, thousands, millions of your most important users and prospects into a handful of personas. Give them names and faces. Create back stories. Breath life into them. And then AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT – listen to what they have to say.
Next time the head of sales (or, even worse, the CEO) goes on a jag about why the current product brochure should be put on the web in its entirety, bring out Don who runs a 3 year old SME on the west coast and has been buying your products since he started. Don recently halved the number of staff in the warehouse and is moving over to JIT. He needs another brochure like he needs a hole in the head.
Or the head of marketing has become obsessed with social networks and wants the entire business promoted in a 3 minute flash movie on MySpace. Bring in Jodie, who was recently nominated for business woman of the year and has a pathological dislike of anything that’s just fallen off the back of bandwagon.
Personas visualise your users and put a pulse behind your empirical and statistical data. You can convene them in a nanosecond and unlike focus groups they don’t need sandwiches at lunchtime, or have their opinions hijacked by a retired SAS officer called Kevin.
But personas must be real. (Okay, they aren’t really real but go with me on this one.) Because personas are so popular agencies are conjuring them up like magician’s rabbits. Abracadabra! There’s your personas. All website ills magically cured. Not.
We’ve been working with personas and feel they only earn their keep if you’ve really worked them through the scenarios that touch your business. Run a few situations. Then run some more. Do your personas stand up? The process is a bit like Second Life but not quite so dorky. That’s really what tomorrow’s workshop is going to be about – working out permutations of personas, scenarios and online positions. Creating a virtual grid that mimics the big picture. This will act as both a test environment and also a way of defining persona work for clients. I’ll let you know how we get on.
More on saying 'thank you' in emails
Posted by admin in customer engagement, email communication, online communication on October 9, 2008
The trouble when you pose a question in your blog is that you’re really honour-bound to answer it as well. You may, occasionally, ponder something that has the world beating a path to your Comments box. But, by and large, people seem to kick back and say: ‘Good question… what’s the answer?’
In my last Post I started out by asking: when do you send a ‘thank you’ email? But it didn’t take much pondering around the subject of writing business emails to decide the real question was: do we say ‘thank you’ online as a convenient piece of default niceness?
When we really want to say: ‘The bank has just bounced your debit card payment!’ does it seem friendlier to start off by saying: ‘Thank you for placing an order with Acme Blogs’? Does the person whose card payment has just been bounced appreciate the subtle run-up to the real purpose of the email?
If you go to a real shop and make a purchase and your card payment is then rejected, the shop assistant is unlikely to start the resulting conversation by thanking you for your order. Being honest about what’s happened doesn’t have to involve announcing it to every customer in the place. You can just get to the point – politely and discreetly.
Email is a very personal communication – even when it’s a business email. We could be buying from the most popular shop online, with billions of customers transacting simultaneously, but the fact that we’ve just tried to place an order with a maxed out card is only evidenced to us and the company concerned. Your email inbox takes on the sanctiity of a confessional. When sending emails we need to take account of that.
Plus, business email is so quick. It’s always possible that we paid with the wrong card, or a cloned copy is currently being used by a bunch of fraudsters in Marra Worra Worra. (Can I apologise to everybody in Marra Worra Worra now. I have no idea if card fraud is an issue in Western Australia. It’s just the most exotic place I can spell.) Back to the point. If there’s a problem with my card, I want to know quickly.
Say a default ‘thank you’ at the beginning of my email and I might just assume payment has gone through without a hitch. What does the Subject line say? If that’s also taking an overly polite approach, I might not get to the real issue – particularly if I’m viewing the response in my email client’s preview pane. People read at speed online. Be less than clear and the primary usefulness of your email may be lost.
- So, don’t say ‘thank you’ in a business email, when you really should be saying something else that’s more important.
- Don’t use the opening paragraph of your email like a communications runway, assuming that’s what it takes to get really useful information – payment problems, delivery dates etc – off the ground.
- Before sending emails, make sure their Subject lines get to the point.
- You should be conversational even when you’re not saying ‘thank you’ in an email.
- Review all automated email sequences against points 1. through 4.
Now all I have to do is take my own advice.
When do you send a 'thank you' email?
Posted by admin in customer engagement, online communication, purchase process on October 7, 2008
Okay, when do you send a ‘thank you’ email?
If a customer purchases online, a ‘thank you’ tends to be part of the email confirmation process. Often, we use the thank you text as the opening paragraph or sentence, that sits above colder but nonetheless essential content – such as describing when and how an item will be delivered.
So maybe the real question is: do we say ‘thank you’ when we should really be saying something else better?
Watch this space.
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