Every time I see a button or text link that includes or says “click here,” I pull 10 hairs out of my head.  I have a lot of hair, so the good news is that I won’t go bald anytime soon.  It’s troubling to see that so many sites are still using this language within their calls to action. Using this flimsy phrase makes the call to action weak!

If the call to action is underlined copy, visitors realize…

...continue to read "“Click Here” Makes Me Rip My Hair Out"

Human nature hasn’t changed and neither have the priorities required for successfully conveying your message.

Contrary to common opinion, David Ogilvy didn’t have a preference for long copy.

What he had was an overwhelming bias towards anything that had been proven to work (which included long copy).  Ogilvy’s real, professed preferences were for consumer testing, research-driven techniques, and performance-based advertising in the truest sense of the term.

Based on those things, the conclusion he came to was that messaging and relevance had…

...continue to read "Tests Indicate Ogilvy’s Old-School Layout Still a Winner"

Perhaps I haven’t had enough coffee this morning…you know us Seattleites…

But I just felt I had to call out an example of how poor copywriting and writing for search engine robots can ruin a decent Unique Value Proposition.

I was referred to a site to look at their homepage design (see screenshot, highlighting is mine), and immediately noticed that they had a prominent Unique Value Proposition (UVP) statement, which was promising.

The UVP statement wasn’t the best I’ve read, but at least it…

...continue to read "When We-We and SEO Copy Attack"

You know the kind of surveys I’m talking about, the ones that ask you to rate something on a scale of 1-5, they are called Likert surveys.  I doubt if anyone actually likes them, but I truly loath them.  Here’s why:

The rating system is too clunky. Most people get stuck between 3 and 4, usually with 4 sounding too good and 3 too wishy-washy, meaning that the results are often more indicative of a temporary mood than an honest…

...continue to read "On a Scale From 1 to 5 Surveys Stink. Here’s Why!"

As a young teen I heard Mark Knopfler sing about “money for nothing and chicks for free” and I remember fantasizing about how good that sounded but even then I knew that it was too good to be true.

I’ve noticed from many of my marketing colleagues that money for nothing is the order of the day; maybe it’s the hard times. Seth Godin blogged yesterday about getting rich quickly, Brian Clark blogged about making money from blogs, and just this…

...continue to read "Money For Nothing & Clicks For Free"