Content and design. Written communications and visual communications. When it comes to creating winning websites, which plays a more important role? Our web copywriters reached out to six experienced agency professionals from the US, Canada and England to get their take.
A recent controversial documentary Game of Death reveals how TV game show participants knowingly inflicted pain and potential death on a fellow contestant in a bid to comply with authority. The shocking outcome reinforces the findings of another controversial experiment led by Yale University in the 1960s. It’s something marketers take advantage of, and consumers should be aware of.
Does your web copywriting alienate or embrace your target audiences? Tapping into the science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) might provide you some insight and direction on what words to use in your marketing messages.
“Something looks funny with the web copy…it looks really bad.” That was a part of the message we recently received form a client who was reviewing a design mock-up for his soon-to-be-launched website. “We really like the copy,” they had said just a few days earlier. So they liked what it stated, just not how it looked. The culprit: typography.
Hysteria continues to grow since a news source reported Americans are collectively becoming paralyzed due to documents comprising “solid blocks of uninterrupted text.”
The Apple logo on a laptop or phone may evoke the same feelings for some people as a crucifix or Star of David pendant does for others, suggests research by Tel Aviv University, Duke University and New York University scientists. According to their research, brands are a form of self-expression and a token of self-worth, just like symbolic expressions of one’s faith.
Do you spend more time than you need to on Facebook, Twitter, Google and any other of the two billion websites floating around the Internet? You may be suffering from a condition scientists are calling Information Deprivation Disorder.
Recently, 52 Weeks of UX posted an article that challenged a commonly held opinion regarding web content — that it should be as concise and simple as possible in order to appeal to the average web user, whose attention span online doesn’t often creep past a few seconds. The popular theory goes, that if you don’t deliver the pertinent facts quickly, your website visitors will get frustrated and go elsewhere to find the information they desire.
In response to the point that web copy should be brief, the article’s author, Joshua Porter, stated: “There are several problems with this assumption, however. First, people do actually read on the Web…scanning is simply the first step in the process. Second, short text can be just as poorly written as long text (and often is). Third, people actually seek out and enjoy reading longer texts.“
Here are the author’s points supporting this statement, and our take:
Online visitors form a first impression of a website quicker than the blink of an eye — literally. It typically takes humans 300 to 400 milliseconds to blink. Meanwhile, scientific research led by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard at Carleton University in Ontario reveals websites have as little as 50 milliseconds to establish a first impression — a mere 1/20th of a second. That’s it!
This is crucial information for any business because once a visitor forms an impression on a subconscious level, he or she will selectively search for information confirming that impression. People do this because we all want to prove we have good judgement. So, if our first impression of a website is negative, we have a tendency to mainly seek and see the negatives, regardless how good a business’ products and services might actually be. Alternatively, if we immediately like what we see, we’ll look for positive information to reinforce that impression.
So how do you avoid making a bad first impression on the Web? Easy. Get a good designer.
Award-winning designer Gonzalo Alatorre, speaking at a TED conference in Mexico last month, suggested design needs to be like a quesadilla. Where was the Founder and Principal of Creative Engine, and designer of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics logo going with this? We spoke to the Alatorre to uncover his motivation for making such a seemingly bizarre claim.
“Webcopyplus was integral in helping us communicate our message and establish our online positioning. Their copywriters are skilled in maintaining a consistent voice throughout the website, and are 100% dedicated to customer satisfaction.”
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