Just don’t buy, but can’t say why

Nielsen’s post, Alertbox: Middle-Aged Users’ Declining Web Performance has me muttering under my breath.

He says:

“Between the ages of 25 and 60, the time users need to complete website tasks increases by 0.8% per year.”

Web 2.0, social networking, and the rest … not the point

In his Prospect review of Against the Matchine by Lee Siegel, We-Think by Charles Leadbeater, and Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Andrew Keen says:

“If this debate between Shirky, Leadbeater and Siegel about the relationship between community and technology sounds familiar that’s because it is. It’s at least version 5.0 of a conversation about industrial society begun by Rousseau and Marx and then, as the Web 2.0 crowd likes to put it, “remixed” by everyone…”*

He ends the article by drawing the focus out a little wider:

Rankings from the Financial Times/Bowen and Craggs

The FT’s annual website effectiveness index was published on April 2.

Over-tubed

Definition: when a company’s web 2.0 presence out-ranks its official or sales sites on Google and other search engines.

Overclocking the web activity for an organisation might go like this:

A contentious blog posted the Xmas before last by the ex-web editor comes top in Google rankings.

Need to cut costs? Hit delete.

The rate of profit is falling for USA corporates (see EUI: 40% risk of recession in the United States by Robin Bew).

It doesn’t take a genius to predict there will be a (further) spending squeeze for most companies.

How will that translate to online channels?

Yes, Mr Nielsen, right you are…

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 1, Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill? has a great piece of advice: take the red pen to the extraneous introductory text and cut to the chase.

He then points out that:

“It’s easy to tell Web writers to cut the fluff. It’s harder to actually do it. Each time a new content contributor joins your team, you must drill them incessantly on the special guidelines for writing for the Web. The guidelines seem obvious, but it takes a lot of skill to design good verbiage.”

I like Jakob’s advice. I try and follow it whenever I can.

But he’s missing an important point here (and I’ll lay bets he knows it).

Lots of web writers and editors don’t need to be told to cut the puff, fluff and verbiage. They know how to write for the web because they’ve been reading useit.com for years.

They’ve been trained as copywriters, journalists and subeditors. They’ve been drilled by print editors during their very lean periods after university, college or school when they worked for next-to-nothing to learn their trade.

They can write tight copy. They can kill unnecessary adjectives. They can write short, punchy sentences. They can keep to one idea per paragraph. And they can do it in plain language, with their eyes closed and their hands tied.

What they can’t do is say “no, I won’t publish that” to the VP of marketing, or comms director, or other departmental boss who’s been called in to back up his marcomms people (or other contributors) who’ve been fighting the web team for that pointless “intro” text (and the rest) because, they say, it’s important.

Want to escalate the disagreement even further? It’s easier to just wait till after office hours and have a beer. No one’s going to read the intro text anyway … users know how to scan past it.

Online marcomms and corporate comms: same family, different faces?

Over the past five years I’ve learned a lot about consultancies’ and companies’ approaches to corporate and marketing websites.

It seems to me that the development and performance measures of websites today are dominated by a marketing-communications approach, no matter the type of site or the goals to be met.

By marketing-communications, I mean branded communications that focus on demand and sales of products or services. (Read Wikipedia’s definition.)

Often this means that marketing assumptions are inappropriately applied to corporate websites by both consultancies and the companies they’re developing websites for.

Marketing’s emphasis is to persuade users to buy. Audiences carry out that decision through a measurable checkout process, whether online or in a shop.

Web 2.0: what’s the problem?

The memory of dot.bomb has faded enough now that even the most conservative of executives are under pressure to build a Web 2.0 presence to supplement standard company websites and other established online activities.

No doubt Web 2.0 applications and content types will eventually have a role in supporting all sorts of company activities, from product development to communications.

But currently Web 2.0 is experimental and while lots of people are speculating no one knows what’s going to win out and what will fall by the wayside.

Making content crystal clear, globally

Newly out in paperback in the UK is David Crystal’s 2006 book, How Language Works.

Crystal, a respected linguist and a prolific writer, argues that: “Language change is inevitable, continuous, universal and multidirectional. Languages do not get better or worse when they change. They just – change.”

Some examples relevant to corporate content:

Content creation and effectiveness

Many companies use in-house contributors for sourcing and posting content to their websites.

Who are these people? What do they contribute? And can that contribution be shown to be successful?