Writing useful, functional and concise copy

byshameemreza

103 followers

Updated 10 years ago

When we write, we do it for a reason. We may want to communicate an idea, help people make informed decisions or to act in the way we would like them to. We want our writing to be easy to understand, persuasive, and to make the reader like and identify with us.

In this article, you’ll learn three simple ways to make sure your online writing is as effective as possible.

Point No One: Write to The Reader

If you really want people to read and understand your copy, then you have to make sure you always keep the reader as the focus of your writing, and put yourself in their shoes. You have to understand who your readers are, what they need, and why they are reading your copy.

In most cases, the people reading your copy don’t care about you – or your clients – at all! They only care about themselves. It sounds harsh, but the reality is that they are reading your copy in the hope that it will serve their own ends – whether that’s to be entertained, to find out more information, to make a better decision, or to satisfy curiosity.

Before the reader does what you want them to, you’ll need to meet their needs first. In most cases you can do this by answering a crude but fundamental question every reader will have: why should I care?

One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced website copywriters make, is to only write from their own perspective. They focus on the information they think is most important, without thinking about why a visitor would be reading their copy in the first place. Readers don’t engage and connect with this type of writing – they ignore or skip it. There’s nothing in it for them.

While it may sound like readers are unusually selfish, this isn’t the case. Most people expect to get something in return for their effort. When a person reads your copy, they are giving you precious time they could be spending playing with their kids, studying for a big test, or practicing a fun hobby. It’s not unreasonable that they want to be sure their time is well spent!

The more you know about your audience, the more effective your copy will be. You can learn more about them by conducting surveys, visiting similar sites, talking to them directly or reading their emails and comments. Clients may also be willing to do this research for you if you explain the benefits. Or, they may have already done it for you – as part of their own research!

Here is an example to illustrate why knowing your readers will help you write better copy:

You’ve been tasked with writing an “About” page for a store that sells expensive digital cameras and lenses to photographers. Since your audience are experts in the field, you can assume plenty of knowledge and use jargon comfortably. But if you had failed to learn that your target audience was experts, you might feel the need to define any jargon you used, and to assume very little knowledge. You might explain some basic information about cameras, or define jargon terms like “wide-angle lens” or “aperture”.

The first version of the page, targeted at experts, would probably go down well. The second version would seem condescending to most experienced photographers, and would quickly see the website’s visitors navigate away to somewhere else that understood them better. By researching your audience you can avoid ever having a problem like this.

Why Would They Read This?

When I’m stuck with a piece of writing – hating what I’ve written or just not knowing where to start, one of my favourite tricks is a thing called “the 5 whys”. The idea is that within 5 steps (5 “why” questions) you can dig beneath the surface answers to get at underlying ideas.

It’s a simple trick. You think about what you’re trying to write, and start with a simple “why?” question. Answer it and then ask another “why?” question. Within a couple of steps you’ll spot some good insights that will help you figure out what to write and thus make a connection with your readers.

Let’s continue the digital camera example. Let’s assume that instead of being experts, our intended audience are people who don’t know much about cameras, and that we’ve decided to write a page with some basic information on buying a camera.

By asking “why?”, we can begin to understand what is likely to have brought the reader to our page. Let’s try it out:

1. Question: Why would I read this information?
Answer: Because I don’t know enough about cameras to start shopping.

2. Question: Why?
Answer: Whenever I’ve looked for cameras the information was too hard to understand.

3. Question: Why?
Answer: It’s always full of technical words and numbers.

4. Question: Why?
Answer: It’s written for people who already know this stuff. I don’t want to have to learn a new language; I just want to buy a camera.

5. Question: Why?
Answer: I just want a camera that will take good photos. I want one that fits in my pocket and is easy to whip out and take a photo when I spot something interesting.

There we go. In five “whys?”, we’ve learned that we should write something that guides the reader, that doesn’t require them to learn jargon, and that gives them enough knowledge to start shopping.

Give this a try whenever you’re uncertain about how to approach a piece of copy. It’s a useful thinking technique and helps you to identify the real reasons why a visitor is reading your copy.

What Do They Need and Already Know?

Thinking about your reader and asking “why” helps you to start thinking in a “reader-centric” way, but it doesn’t provide the whole picture. The next step is to think about what the reader may want to do or know.

Again, the way you do this will depend on what you’re writing and how much you already know about your audience. As with the “who” and “why” steps, you may need to brainstorm a little and think about what people need to know or do. Try to put yourself in your reader’s shoes again and figure out what is important to them.

If this doesn’t give you enough to work with, do some user research. Again, talk to your readers, check your website statistics and search logs, and talk to people who are in contact with the readers. These sources will give you a lot of information about what your readers need to know.

When doing this step, focus on two questions:

1. What do they need to know?

2. What do they already know?

The first question gives you ideas about what to include in the writing – the types of topics you’ll cover and the way you’ll do it.

Thinking about what they already know tells you where to start and how much background and context to provide. Think about whether readers already understand the topic or whether they need to be brought up to speed before understanding the detail. Some audiences may have a different starting point to others, which may affect how you write.

A common mistake in website copy is to leap straight into a topic without the necessary lead-up information. It might be missing an introduction, some background, definitions of jargon words, or important context. This usually occurs because the writer knows the topic so well, that they assume the reader shares the same amount of knowledge. If you’re writing for experts, this may be acceptable, but in most other cases, you should make sure you provide some background or lead-up information.

What Next?

The last two things you will need to consider before you start writing are:

1. What the reader is likely to do.

2. What you would like them to do after reading your copy. They may want to read more information, contact you, buy your product, compare it with other products, or fill out an application form. Whichever it may be, it’s up to your copy to persuade them to do it.

Point No Two: Write to Them, Not to Yourself

Now you’ve spent some time thinking about your reader, you are ready to write.

Remember: when you start writing, keep your intended reader in mind and write to them, not to yourself.

Here’s a really simple tip – call them “you”. You’ll notice I’ve been doing this right throughout this site and this article as well. That’s because I’m writing to you. We’re having a conversation. It may not feel like a conversation – after all, you’re reading my words. But I hope that there’s more happening in your mind – I hope you’re thinking of questions, pondering your work, and thinking of how each point is relevant to you.

Much of this is triggered simply because I’m calling you “you”. This is called writing in the first person. All throughout our lives we are conditioned to pay attention when someone addresses us directly.

Web copywriters can tap into this conditioning to keep readers paying attention. Next up, you may need some help with starting your copy. After all, writers will tell you that the blank page is an intimidating sight!

In the past you may have read copy like this and felt it was generally “bad” or “boring”, but by this point in the mini-article, I hope you can identify exactly why it doesn’t work. It’s completely focused on the writer (me) and not focused on the reader at all. I wanted to tell people what I did and that I had skills and experience. I thought this approach was okay, given that it was my own website.

It wasn’t long before I realized the problem and fixed it with the help of the following questions:

1. Who will read it?

Who cares enough to bother reading this? Two main groups of readers:

a) People who followed a link from a conference website, an article or maybe a blog post that I’ve commented
on, and are curious about who I am.

b) Someone who is thinking about hiring me for freelance work or to speak at a conference.

2. Why would they read it?

Why would someone visit this content on my website? Why would they need to know about me?

They want to know whether I can help them with a work-related problem. They may be thinking about hiring someone and want to see if I have the skills to do the work. Or maybe they want to get a feel for my personality to see if I’ll fit in well with their team.

3. What do they need to know and already know?

If you were hiring someone to do some work for you – let’s say you needed someone to help you reorganise your web content – what might you want to know about? Based on discussions I’ve had with people in the past, here’s my brainstormed list:

• Does this person have the skills to do the work?
• Has this person done work like mine?
• Who is actually going to do the work? Will it be done by the person I’m reading about or are they going to subcontract it out?
• Will they listen to my needs, or push their own agenda?
• Will they treat me like an equal, or like I’m stupid?
• Will we enjoy working with this person?
• How good are they with deadlines? Will the work get done on time?
• How much is this going to cost me? How will I manage the costs?
• What sort of quality will I get? Will it stand up over time, or will I need to have it redone in 6 months?

This brainstormed list gives me some good ideas about how to target the piece of writing. I need to make sure these questions are all answered.

People will also have a different understanding of the services they may be hiring. They may have worked with someone who called themselves an “information architect” in the past, but who carried out a very different service than what I’m offering. I should make sure I clearly describe what I actually do, without jargon, so there are no misunderstandings.

4. What next?

The reader should get a good enough picture from the copy to see that I’m the right person to work with them. If I’m not, that’s okay – they don’t need to do anything. But if I am the right person, the reader will want to contact me so that we can start working together.

As you can see, this thinking process gave me some great ideas about making the page much stronger and reader-focused. It’s many times stronger than if I had just sat down to write about myself.

A rewrite

With this new approach to my readers, I decided to do the following two things:

• Firstly, I rewrote my bio. I removed a bunch of jargon, and made sure that it better represented who I was and what I did.
• Secondly, I wrote a new page called: “Why choose me?”.

My bio page is still written so that it’s about me – after all it’s my bio, so it needs to be. However, by following the process above, you can still write about yourself while keeping the focus on the reader.

I also recognise that you are hiring me as an addition to your skill set. You already have smart people doing great work. I won’t tell them what to do or treat them like they don’t know what they are doing. We’ll work together to produce something great.

I’m flexible

I don’t have fancy, fixed methodologies and step-by step approaches that I must follow. I’ll work in a way that suits you – after all, you are buying my skills, not a methodology.

Need more?

You can find out more about me and the type of work I do:

• My bio: this describes a little more about who I am and what matters to me.
• Information architecture: organising, structuring and labelling your content, plus designing navigation & page layouts.
• Interaction design: figuring out the workflow for applications, and designing screens and how they behave.
• Writing: writing web content from scratch, or improving your existing information.
• Teaching: my workshops and presentations represent what I do and how I think.

Summary

When readers visit your content, they’re there for a reason. They may want to get something done, learn more or find answers. If you talk about yourself without explaining why it matters, you’ll lose them. But if you write for and to them, then they’ll be hooked on your words.

To write for your readers, think about:

• Who would read your content?
• Why they would read it (Note: use the “5 whys” trick)
• What do they need to know and already know?
• What should happen next?

Then write to them. Call them “you” and answer their questions, while also encouraging them to take the actions you want.

Follow-Up Reading

• Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book,(http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/10/better_beginnin.html%20)
• article. Kathy Sierra (http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/10/better_beginnin.html%20)
• Who Needs Headlines? Shaun Crowley. (http://alistapart.com/article/whoneedsheadlines)
• Why—who cares—so what. Donna Maurer. (http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/2006/why-who-cares-so-what)
• Freelancer Goal (http://www.freelancergoal.com)

Thanks for reading my WA family. Don't forget to like and comment.