'Speak To The Dog, About What Matters To The Dog, In The Language Of The Dog'
By: Jonathan Briggs
February 1, 2006
Steve Jackson has written a great article Speak To The Dog, About What Matters To The Dog, In The Language Of The Dog on the Conversion Chronicles. The site regularly suggests how e-commerce companies can improve their conversion rates.
Steve's basic message is that sites should "write for your target audience, about what it is they want, in a simple and attractive way".
Many companies treat their websites as online versions of their brochures with language that is corporate and stilted, honed through multiple revisions and devoid of any personality.
We encourage our clients to talk to their customers more directly. They need to develop a special "voice" for the web and to demonstrate that behind their sites there are real people, ready to answer questions, deal with problems and who are interested in their customers.
Not all of our clients get this yet and like many organisations they resist the changes that might be needed because of the scale of changes that could be involved.
It may involve hiring a new editor or journalist rather than a web manager. It may mean changing the frequency with which site updates occur to match the tempo of the company.
It certainly involves measuring how the site is currently performing, experimenting with changes and measuring the results.
In Steve Jackson's article he argues that making these measurements is key and he encourages experiments that directly compare two versions of site components by serving different versions of your site to different visitors.
This is exactly the type of work we love to help our clients perform as it generates evidence that we can share with other clients.
If you think that your site needs to "talk dog" better then come and talk to us.