Sprezzatura (making complexity appear simple)

The Cambridge University Accommodation Service provide a remarkable service: they find lodgings for thousands of University people; or find tenants for the University, colleges and private landlords, depending how you look at it. The remarkable bit is that their friendly, personalised service is free – even to landlords most of the listings are without charge.

Possible on one web site?

To make this happen through a web site is difficult, because there are so many parties involved. Students, scholars and staff are looking for accommodation, but sometimes departments look on their behalf. The University wants to fill its houses and rooms, as do individual Colleges, but only sometimes, and sporadically. Private landlords also want tenants, and hotels and B&Bs would like to advertise in case anyone needs a short-term stopover…

And the staff need to co-ordinate all this behind the scenes.

When we first made a web site for Cambridge University’s Accommodation Service, our hands were tied. There were strict branding and structure guidelines because the site is a subsection of the overall University web site.

When they wanted a redesign – or more accurately a realignment – we found many of those restrictions had loosened. Design was only one part. They wanted to make the information-heavy site clearer and easier to use, as well as adding new features.

The content challenges

• Keeping a depth of information without drowning people in it
• Creating a friendly, helpful but respectable and proper tone (befitting the institution)
• Naming different parties consistently
• Communicating clearly to a multi-cultural audience, some with English as a second language
• Making online registration and other processes as unambiguous as possible to minimise contact with the office
• Selling a service (to several parties) without being sales-like
• Ensuring that user-written content would not dilute the tone and clarity of the site

I tackled much of this through a detailed audit of their content and processes. Once naming and tone decisions had been made, they were ruthlessly applied to content old and new.

We structured the site much more clearly so that each party had a clear route in from the front page – from understanding the purpose of the site, to finding out more, through registration, to eventually having their own logged in homepage, customised to hide any content not directly relevant to them.

Some information was cut, some ordered into ‘Help topics’, and only the most essential and urgent made visible at the top of the hierarchy.

Although there was no sales-sounding pitch, the benefits of the service were shown more clearly to each party, and the staff given the ability to prove their value to the University through analytics and surveys. I wrote style guides to keep new content in line with the new layout and design.

The Accommodation Service project was rewarding because it was a chance to get stuck into real content challenges while having to work closely with the designer and developer.

And it seems to have worked.

The real reason your last web site was a car crash

Who was responsible for your horrific old web site again?

You know, the one crowded with far too much information, most of it out of date, and navigation like a drunk describing the way to the kebab shop.

The one where one line is emphasised in italics, the next one in bold, before the floodgates open and red and blue type competes with underlining, CAPITALS, and multiple exclamation marks!!!!!!!

BECAUSE EVERY LINE YOU WRITE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE SHOUTED!!!

The one where the headings style is inconsistent and there are more font variations across the pages than across the Anglican church.

The one where you’re spelling and grammer, is wronger.

And sometimes just fragments of

The one where you started a blog but couldn’t keep it up, or perhaps just put company news or press releases in there to keep it ticking over.

The one with the bad photos that have been stretched to fit a space or are a file type that most browsers don’t read any more.

The one with the revolting colours.

The one where more and more features and icons and menu bar items get squashed onto the front page so that it’s hard to know where to start and quite frankly nobody has any clue what you were trying to say in the fireplace.

That’s the one

Who was responsible for it again?

Your last web team?

Then you have my sympathy. How unlucky to have got stuck with the only web team on earth whose vision for a web site is like something that Damien Hirst would produce given 8 cans of fluorescent paint, some live chickens and a meat cleaver.

It must have been all their fault.

However, in the tiniest of possibilities that you, the owner and guardian of the site, might just, perhaps, have had a miniscule mite of influence over the content and how it ended up looking …

Then we need to talk before you get a new site.

It doesn’t matter how much smarter the new car is, if you don’t learn how to drive and you leave your junk inside it’s going to end up a dirty wreck and stop working.

Just like the old one.

The biggest threat to clear, compelling and useful web sites is not rogue designers or web teams. It is clients who won’t learn how to look after their content.

Agreed?

Presenting poems and other valuable content

Don’t worry, you don’t have to like poetry. You don’t even have to know who or what Carol Ann Duffy or a poet laureate is. This is about valuing content in the way that you present it on your web site so that your readers will value it too.

Here’s what happened. Carol Ann Duffy is a talented British poet. She wrote a topical and smart little verse about David Beckham being ruled out of the World Cup because of an Achilles’ injury. The Mirror, one of the UK’s tabloid newspapers, published it exclusively on its web site last week.

And that’s where it went Goldenballs up:

Can you even see where it begins and ends at first glance? The problems with this layout are:

1. The title is not distinct enough. It is the same font size as the rest of the copy, and the italics make it look less, rather than more important than other elements.
2. The body font for the poem is not distinctive either.
3. The layout does not frame the verse in any way, with white space or indentation for example.
4. There’s a BLOODY GREAT BIG ANIMATED ADVERT right in the middle of it, breaking up a line.
5. There is a typo in the line afterward, ‘aspecial’, as well as a missing line break, still uncorrected 6 days after publication.

If you want people to value your content, present it in a fitting way

With poetry, these transgressions are magnified, because poetry is language arranged in such a way that it invites you to take a closer look: to enjoy, to be moved, to think. The frame is vital – from the title, the line and verse breaks through to the layout and choice of fonts and paper if the poem is published in print.

Shouldn’t as much care be taken online?

I’m not talking about fancy ornamentation. Just enough care to honour the material, draw attention to it and even enhance its meaning, because most poetry is written for the eye as well as the ear.

Would you be happy with a professional painting stuck on the gallery wall with no mount or frame? Or a meal at a decent restaurant slapped in a sloppy pile on paper plates?

Bad presentation says that you don’t value your content. And if you don’t value it then your customers certainly won’t.

Poetry suffers on the web

Although no other poetry site is as brazen as the stanza-splitting advert-loving Mirror, I am yet to find one that does poetry justice. Many of them put small font sizes in dense array for an overall dull effect. The Poetry Society are one example, who also use a low contrast font (being a lighter grey) that reminds me of financial small print.

Perhaps the Mirror needs a poetry style guide (because that’s going to happen). Perhaps it’s okay if they present their own copy as worthless, but for goodness’ sake when they’ve got the poet laureate submitting an exclusive verse they could display it in such a way to make readers take it seriously – or even read it in the first place.

The best example I’ve seen for laying out poetry online is Verbatim Poetry. I would say that, because I did it. It’s not perfect, but even as a fun little hobby on the side it puts whoever was paid to publish the David Beckham poem in The Mirror to shame.

What do you reckon?

Keep your business blog fit and effective

Blogging is consistent publishing, online. It demands long-term commitment, creative inspiration and a combination of writing, marketing and web skills.

Not surprisingly, some people appreciate a little help with all that. Not someone to write their blog for them, but to get alongside to inspire new ideas, guide the tone and style, give online writing and editing tips and motivate them to keep on publishing.

Blog personal trainer service – whatever you need to make your blog brilliant

My blog personal trainer service provides whatever it takes to ensure that your blog posts are consistent, compelling and clear: actually serving your business and getting read by the right people – not just to begin with, but sustained over time. How? Through:

• Training – how to write posts that get read and hit their mark
• Inspiration for post ideas, angles and headlines
• Pushing your work to the limit through editing and writing
• Advice and accountability for a blog schedule
• Coaching your writing skills
• Monitoring the quality of your blog continually
• Phone/email/meet up support when you need help

The blog personal trainer service is an ongoing service from £375 per month plus VAT. This price guarantees you one day of my time each month to train, coach, edit, support, or inspire your blog to make it succeed.

I can take a limited number of clients for this service each month so get in touch quickly before all the allocations have gone.

I also run a How to write great blog posts 2-hour workshop, or you can contact me to talk about how else to make your content brilliant. Try Endis Solutions for a whole new web site that works perfectly for you.

5 demonic mistakes to exorcise when you edit

Have no mercy. Cast them out of your copy. Now. These are vital corrections to make when you edit your writing before publication, otherwise you will look like an amateur.

I know the second one is controversial. Get over it. Straighten up and fly right.

1. Waffle

Most readers aren’t going to read your article until they can see that it’s useful to them. So tell them, straight away, in the headline, first paragraph or both, what your article is about and why they should read it.

Then deliver.

The longer you waffle about some metaphor for the topic or how you felt getting up today or – look at me, I’m actually writing a blog post – the greater the chance that the next part of the page to receive attention will be the back button.

2. Verb and subject disagreement

The consultant is a singular subject. Therefore he makes phone calls, adds items to his diary and is overjoyed when it’s time for lunch.

My colleagues are a plural subject. Therefore they make fun of my haircut, add amusing accents to their impressions and are thrilled when I throw Victoria sponge around the office.

Everyone is a singular subject. Although it involves more than one person, the focus is on every one, singular. Therefore everyone makes time for SmyWord, adds this blog to his or her favourites, and is happy to leave a comment below.

The same applies to no one and everybody – they are singular. They and them are plural. Never the twain shall meet.

3. Shifting person

Choose what person each of the parties in your article is going to be, and whether they are single or plural, and stick to it for the duration of the article. For example, in most of my blog posts there are three main parties:

1. The writer
2. The reader
3. The people the writer is talking to the reader about (e.g. users)

The writer is me. So I use I, me and my. If I was writing on behalf of a company, it might be we, us and our. Just as long as it is the same all the way through the article.

Steer clear of talking about yourself in the third person – as the author of this blog discovered – that way madness lies.

The reader is you. So that is what you’re called. In modern English you can be either plural (as you all know) or singular (I’ll explain it to you after class). So it’s hard to go wrong, just as long as you avoid the dreaded third person again: folly, as the readers of this blog know.

The people I tell you about are they: clients of mine, your web site users – unless I am talking about just one, in which case he, she or it is required.

The crucial point is that you are consistent within an article, and establish a pattern for your web site at large. Why? Because switching between singular and plural looks amateur, and shifting person around confuses your readers.

4. Sloppy punctuation

A simple guideline for exclamation marks is that they should only be used in recorded speech and even then, sparingly.

The product manager shouted “eat my shorts!”

As for quotation marks, the clue is in the name. They should only be used to enclose a direct quotation, proven by supplying the reference. If you can’t reference it, don’t quote it.

An even simpler guideline for semicolons is don’t use them – unless you can explain their correct usage to somebody else without bluffing. The same goes for ellipses (…), em dashes (–) and, well, every other punctuation mark. If you don’t understand it don’t use it. Learn to create effects with the words you choose, not with little pictures.

5. Bad spelling

There is simply no excuse for bad spelling and typos. Not when you have spell-check, the ability to proofread your own writing, this guide to apostrophes, and colleagues or friends to check it over for you.

Any comments?

The difference an hour makes

Here on SmyWord I offer a free sample – an hour of my time – so that you can taste a bit of content strategy magic for absolutely nothing.

Only an hour! What could I possibly do in that time?

The answer so far is: plan a blog post, write a tag line, critique site pages, critique whole web sites, write front page copy, or meet up in the pub to talk about content strategy as a career (that one especially fun).

Here are 3 highlights from some recent free sample requests:

I love working with fresh, innovative companies offering genuinely good things. Pitchup are leading the charge in getting the people of Britain camping again. They provide a massive directory of campsites and the tools to find what you’re after, be it beach, yurt, or proximity to the pub.

They asked me to write them a blog post about celebrity camping. They took the free hour as a discount off the fee. Having captured the company’s tone of voice (their words), I’m now helping with the content for their site realignment – coming soon.

I’ve just sent Mixcloud some suggestions to make their service clearer to first time visitors (only just – no time to implement yet). Sometimes you get too close to a web site and lose the outside view.

Mixcloud loved the objective feedback: ‘this is really helpful. We knew that it could be a lot better but didn’t really know what to do!’ Mixcloud are another original, energetic service. I defy you to start listening to their shows without wanting to get up groove around the office.

Political Insight put a tremendously useful tool into the hands of local and national political groups to help them to communicate and campaign effectively. I gave a free hour to developing the tag line, now in use on the site. They were chuffed. They came back for further copywriting and editing.

Do these examples give you any ideas? Is there anything I could do for you in a free 60 minutes?

Holding back notes on the trumpet and coming out top on Google

Two things stand out for me about estate agent Kevin Henry.

Firstly, they have a genuine passion about Saffron Walden because they’re local and have lived there for years, unlike the corporate agents who open hollow branches everywhere.

Secondly, because of this authenticity and experience – and years of hard work – they are repeatedly the number one home-selling agent in the area. And they deserve it.

Their old web site was an uneven jumble of colours, components, microsites; tens of icons with no explanations, miscellaneous pages buried deep in the navigation. It was hard to know where to start, what to click on. Somehow along the way someone had forgotten to put a picture of a house on the front page. What was it that you do again?

Doing the obvious thing well

People are looking for a home, not an estate agent. In terms of the content, this meant stripping away anything inessential to the single task of searching for houses straight away. No questions, no introductions: simply an easy search box next to a big map of the area showing lots of properties. Underneath we put a scrolling gallery of available homes to communicate activity and choice, and most of all to reinforce the message that Kevin Henry provides homes.

When it’s that easy for the buyer, the seller wants in too.

Company profile, contact details and the articulation of selling points are still vital, so we made them easy to find on the footer and top menu, but the best thing people can discover about an estate agent is that they have loads of homes, easy to find, with lots of details.

Search engine optimisation

And of course people need to find the site in the first place. We set about boosting search rankings with our clandestine, rune-casting, voodoo process of … writing choice content in all the right places: content that makes sense to readers, appeals to search engines, and, don’t forget, appeals to the person reading the search results too. Even the witty strap line got sacrificed (it’s no good having a witty strap if no one ever finds it).

Kevin Henry are now first on Google for ‘saffron walden estate agents’. And it is gratifying that where other results say things like ‘longest established and best known’, ‘we have offices in Saffron Walden’ and ‘a wide range of property’ – that our client’s description says ‘Kevin Henry sell more houses each year in the Saffron Walden area than any other estate agent’.

Which one would you click on?

Personality

The challenge in the rest of the copy was to convey friendliness, even a little bit of cheek, while keeping the tone professional and the experience straightforward. Not everyone can write a business blog but for this client it is the perfect vehicle to display some personality and knowledge. When they started in the late 80s they used to send out humorous newsletters to a mailing list – the blog was simply starting this up again online.

Actually there is a third thing I love about Kevin Henry. As I got to know them, I discovered just how amazing their service is. I heard it from satisfied customers, and I saw the cupboard with bags of Waitrose goodies prepared as a surprise for moving day.

The joy of keeping a web site simple and focused is that customers will already love you for the ease with which they can find relevant information. You don’t need to blow every note on your trumpet from the start. Then, when all the extras of incredible service appear on top, you’ve not just got customers but excited fans.

Gabriel Smy is a writer working on the web. His passion is making things clear. He is a Content Strategist for a small but perfectly formed web company in Cambridge, UK. As well as SmyWord, he runs the poetry blog Verbatim and writes about his first novel at Tongues of Men. Of course, you should follow him on twitter here.

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