My 2-year-old eats iPlayer for breakfast

The other morning I came downstairs to find my 2-year-old already up, watching his favourite programme on the Internet. Nothing remarkable in that per se, except that he was alone. And I had shut the computer down the night before.

This isn’t about how smart my child is (although he can complete a Cat-in-a-Hat jigsaw in under 5 minutes reverse-side up and calculate the exact opposite of everything we ask him to do instantaneously, before implementing it without flaw).

No, the point is that in iPlayer the BBC have designed a web site so easy to use that a 2-year-old can master it.

After turning the computer on he clicks the browser icon and iPlayer opens as the homepage. From there, he clicks on an image that he recognises – perhaps Charlie, Lola or Mister Tumble – or on one that looks like it’s for kids.

Admittedly, the homepage is set to the Children’s page. But I’ve seen him get there from the front page too, by clicking on ‘Last Played’ or one of the many pictures in ‘Highlights’ or ‘Most Popular’.

Once one kids’ programme is open, he skips through a chain of large thumbnails displayed below in ‘More’ and ‘Recommendations’ until it brings up something appealing. Then he clicks the play and full screen icons, and kicks back with a little bowl of whatever he found at toddler height in the cupboard (dry noodles, honey, an unripe plum, that sort of thing).

How easy is that?

Elements of toddler-friendly design

iPlayer is doing something right that children as young as two are able to operate it. This is not news. But that someone so young should be comfortable navigating a web site made me wonder what design elements enabled his success. Here are some of my suspicions:

1) Navigation is image-based

My son can’t read a word. Not a single word. He gets the content he wants by clicking on the pictures. An adult might take shortcuts by reading the text – find the right episode straight away or employ the search box – but a preliterate child can get to the same place in time purely by clicking on pictures.

2) Images have good affordance

It is not just that the menus are images, but that the pictures are instantly recognisable (a character he has seen before) or representative (something that looks like it is for children). This provides the simple experience of seeing what you want and clicking on it to get it, otherwise known as show don’t tell.

3) Many points of entry into content and many routes between

Searching iPlayer my son rarely gets stuck. There are always more images to click on in some type of menu, scrolling gallery, or after-play recommendation. He can enter the content many ways and because they are all connected together can hop between programmes easily.

4) Identifiable and simple buttons for universal actions

iPlayer has buttons big and conventional enough for a 2-year-old to click on; for selecting, sideways scrolling, playing, pausing, and enlarging to full screen.

5) Key content above the fold, and all in one window

He doesn’t scroll down yet which shows that all this navigation is accomplished in the top part of the page.

6) One-screen experience

It helps that iPlayer works without popups or multiple windows. Otherwise he can accidentally click on the wrong window and get confused, poor chap.

Just because a web site is well designed for a non-reading 2-year-old doesn’t mean that it is well designed for anyone else. But this example proves that even with complex navigation and copious content a site can be simple to get around.

And the hardest part of the process, apart from tackling the plum? – Trying to do all of that clicking on only one side of a clunky, domed, single sprung piece of white plastic. My two-year-old might be a whizz on iPlayer, but he’s no fan of Mighty Mouse.

Orwell’s other advice about writing

If you are writing (anything at all: emails to colleagues, notices on the fridge, product descriptions, text messages to your friends…) then I hope at some point you have come across George Orwell’s 6 rules for writing.

Them’s good rules.

They are the conclusion to his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, in which he talks about the relationship between clear language and clear thinking. He ends his argument with 6 rules for sharp and accurate writing, in the hope that, not only will people express themselves more clearly, but that they might think more clearly too – that their communication might become meaning-full.

And yet halfway through the article, Orwell mentions another list for writers that gets me just as excited. This list is not talked about half as much (like omg it’s buried in a monster para surely you don’t expect me to like actually read this thing wtf), but it is pure platinum. Reading it is like discovering that The Godfather has a sequel or that Dannii’s sister can sing a bit too.

Orwell says that a ‘scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:’

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

‘And he will probably ask himself two more:’

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

If more writers (of anything at all) were to ask themselves these questions, then the world would be a much clearer and more beautiful place.

Why not ask them about the next thing that you write?

Thank you, Eric Blair.

How to write in faux legalese

Editing a sales brochure recently I came across this line and many more like it:

If required [Company name] can therefore provide an introduction to a solicitor.

This is what George Orwell hated. It is an unnecessarily inflated way to say something simple. Look at all the extraneous parts:

If required – the whole thing is if required. It’s a sales brochure. Just describe your service and let the reader decide if it is required or not.

Therefore is also redundant. There is no need to state explicitly that this sentence follows the previous one in logical argument. If I said: I like plums. Therefore can I have one of yours? – it would make sense. But take ‘therefore’ out and it still makes sense. Human-sounding sense.

Provide an introduction to is one of Orwell’s ‘false limbs’. Keep it simple. Choose the basic verb: introduce.

Orwell deplored this sort of language in politics. It is everywhere in business, inflating sentences to sound grandiose. I call it the faux legal style. It sounds like a contract or piece of legislation, yet is thin in actual meaning. Far from convince, it is more likely to put customers off, by forcing them to read more than they have to for little reward.

What the writer meant to say was:

We can introduce you to a solicitor.

Isn’t that better? Not just for understanding but for tone of voice too?

Writing in the faux legal style

Ten tips to say lots while saying nothing at all:

1. Use unnecessary phrases, such as this one.
2. Choose a protracted and more lengthy phrase where possible.
3. In addition, employ words that therefore reinforce the obvious logical connections, thus.
4. Let your verbs exhibit a tendency to complexity.
5. Capitalise certain Nouns whenever they appear.
6. Sprinkle in some Latin or Greek ad nauseam.
7. Talk about yourself in the third person as SmyWord here illustrates.
8. Qualify your assertions endlessly, regardless of necessity, whether they need to be qualified or not.
9. Omit all feeling that is what some would recognise to be emotional terminology.
10. Let the passive be used instead of the active.

In conclusion, therefore, a suitable area for the Reader’s comments upon this subject is afforded space below, should the Reader wish to remark, ruminate or give exposition to his or her thoughts upon the matters raised by the Author in this article.

That is, any comments?

What George Orwell actually said about writing

Writers love George Orwell. He wrote this:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Legend. If discovering or being reminded of these rules is what you take away from this post – then my work here is done. However, if you want to know what Orwell was really getting at, read on.

Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, from which the above is an excerpt, makes a more fundamental point than simply how to write good. He is concerned with the effect of language on our ability to think.

He claims that not only do foolish thoughts lead to ugly, stale and inaccurate language – but that ugly, stale and inaccurate language ‘makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.’ He says: ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’

The more we use poor language, the poorer our thoughts become.

If we don’t have the words we can’t have the thoughts.

Orwell was writing about the language used by politicians. He was concerned, not just that they all get their points across clearly, but that they preserve the ability to have a point worth making in the first place. That, when alone in their minds, their attempt to formulate ideas is equipped with the best arsenal possible – in array, range, and accuracy. That they are able to have the important thoughts in the first place, before they even say a word.

It is easy to imagine that for politicians the thoughts that they have are a matter of life and death to others, because they consider and discuss policies concerning military action, social welfare, security, crime and health.

But what are the consequences of your thoughts? On your business, your relationships, your health, your future, your art, your contribution? The popularity of cognitive therapy suggests that the ability to change what you think about yourself and your environment is crucial to your ability to change at all. But from where will you get the language for those new thoughts?

What if improving your language could unlock a greater range of options for your work? That by learning to speak and write more accurately – as we all can – you might begin to think more accurately too?

Orwell wanted people to say more clearly what they meant. But he wanted them to mean something worthwhile to begin with. Behind his excellent editorial tips lie two principles that should underpin everything that we write:

1. Mean something before you say anything
2. The clearer your language, the better your thoughts

Something to think about the next time you use leverage as a verb.

What do you think?

Does your web site suffer from the vuvuzela effect?

I couldn’t help laughing at a gag on the radio yesterday. It was a spoof ad for a compilation CD: ‘Relax,’ said the deep male voice, ‘to the soothing sound of … Vuvuzela Moods.’

If you have no idea what a vuvuzela is, I’m hazarding a guess that you don’t follow football. Switch on any broadcast of the 2010 World Cup and the first thing you hear is the blaring, persistent, invasive drone of what sounds like thousands of cheap plastic horns being raspberried into deafeningly by thousands of untrained lips all at the same time.

Which is what it is.

The vuvuzela is a monotone plastic trumpet adopted by football fans from all nations for the tournament in South Africa. The problem is that no matter what you try to perform on your particular horn, once more than a handful of people are farting away at the same time, the result is a constant, thunderous drone.

It does not rise and fall with the action. It does not rally one team against the other. It does not start a chain reaction or provoke a response from other fans.

It just drones.

What happened to roaring? Chants and counter-chants? Silence? Yells of relief? Rattles, whistles and airhorns? The end result of a thousand people blowing the same trumpet is a continual buzz that deafens the crowd and distracts the teams.

How your web site can sound different

Your web site makes a sound. It has a voice. Every piece of text that a visitor sees on your site she forms into internal sounds for comprehension. The more she has to read, the more noise you generate in her head.

Many websites fall into the vuvuzela trap. They try to say too much. They try to emphasise every point to the detriment of all. They give instructions or explanations for every little thing.

The end result is an ear-splitting racket where nothing stands out and visitors quickly switch off. Here’s how to avoid the vuvuzela effect on your web site:

1) Contrast

Resist the temptation to put copy on every page, or instructions for every action. If some pages absolutely must be read, let others rely on the graphical elements to get their message across. Where possible, show, don’t tell.

The paradox is that the more you explain, the less is understood. Why? Because people stop reading. Don’t blow your horn ever harder. Stop, and let them think.

Frame your copy with plenty of room, use fonts that are easy on the eye, well spaced, large, and high contrast.

Then, like an eye-catching football banner or a spur-of-the-moment chant, have a small handful of items that stand out from the rest. They could be offers, vital information, or your calls to action – the important thing is that only a few are emphasised.

What is the one thing you want each page on your web site to do? Emphasise that. And nothing else.

2) Uniqueness

The vuvuzelas sound the same, whichever fans are wielding them, all of the time. But footballers want their fans to be singing their songs, responding to their movement on the pitch, cheering them alone toward victory.

Put some thought into what makes your business unique and reflect that on your web site. Not just in what you offer but in how you sound. Even the smallest tweaks to the microcopy on your site can create a voice that people are not used to hearing online – friendly, honest, cheeky, elite, earthy, funny, suave – just anything but over-confident and corporate.

There is a Portsmouth Football Club supporter in England who has become famous for standing at the games ringing a hand bell. Why does he get the attention? Because it sounds good? No. Because no one else is doing it.

3) Serve the end goal

It remains to be seen whether the vuvuzelas have a detrimental impact on teams’ performances. Portugal’s Ronaldo has said ‘It is difficult for anyone on the pitch to concentrate … A lot of players don’t like them’.

The point is this: remember what the goal of your web site is, and create a voice and experience that leads directly to it. It may be tempting to get sidetracked into justifying your company, or write ego-boosting press releases, but if these things do not lead the site to succeeding – then cut them out.

Finally, if you really can’t do anything about the sound of the vuvuzelas don’t worry – you could always sell earplugs instead.

Costly problems content strategy solves for SMEs, part 2

Getting a web site for your business is a challenge. You know that you should have a site, because increasingly your customers and market are online. But you don’t know much about web technology and you don’t want to be taken for a ride.

All this talk about SEO and social media strategy and domain names and information architecture … can’t you just have a basic site that works?

Of course you can.

What businesses are beginning to realise though, is that content strategy is part of the basic package.

You wouldn’t commission a web site without graphic design. And yet the graphics are only the means of presenting … what exactly? What is the web site there to say? What is it there to do? And how is it going to say and do those things?

Content strategy answers these questions. The story of the expensive camel introduced us to its importance for small businesses. We looked at the first four problems that it overcomes for you. Now let’s go through the next four.

Your fifth problem: your site might look great when you launch but will deteriorate soon after

Print is a one-off, fixed medium. Your web site, however, will probably be updated. It may have a blog. The public may make comments, add suggestions. Or perhaps your staff will update the articles every now and then or add new events or listings.

Unless you have an editorial guide, detailing the tone, style and formatting of content pages, then the chances of your site remaining as good as it looked at launch are zero. And back to the budget question: if you want your web site to be effective with your customers over time, then how much is it worth to have the editorial help – either one-off or ongoing – to make sure that this happens?

What use is buying a swimming pool if you never have it cleaned so no one can swim in it?

Your sixth problem: blogging is tough to keep up

There are many reasons why a blog can be a good idea on a business web site. It allows you to display your expertise, gives you control over the tone and personality of the site, works wonders for the search engines and brings your web site to life.

But there is a caveat: if you are not going to blog consistently with useful, interesting and well-written articles, it is better not to bother at all.

Blogging is harder to do than you think. After a while, ideas are hard to come by. Writing time is tricky to justify when there are a million other things you need to do for your business. The whole write—edit—check—format—check again—publish—promote cycle is much bigger than just jotting a few thoughts down. But anything less makes you look like an amateur.

If you have help, it’s a different story. Either great training and editorial guidance to begin with, or even ongoing support – a small price to pay for consistently publishing articles that bring your business to life online.

Your seventh problem: when you finally realise what you really want on your web site, it will be too late

No matter what ideas you start with, when you see your site being formed you will probably change your mind or have further ideas about it.

If there is no strategy behind what appears on the site from the beginning, this process will get tiresome and expensive. The web company will be spending time – paid for by your money – on creating a framework, structure, navigation, design – based on guesswork. When you see it and decide you really wanted something else, be prepared to get your wallet out. At this stage change is difficult, because the web site is a system of many interconnected elements. Change one, and you have to change them all.

It’s like seeing a house being built and then deciding you don’t like the shape of the kitchen or the location of the bathroom. You can’t change the architect’s plans when the house is half built.

Content strategy gets the plans accurate at the beginning. A content expert helps you to know what you really want and what will work; what content needs to be nailed down from the start and what can be changed easily later on.

Content is not the only element that requires careful planning – get things straight with the developer and designer too. But it is often the part that gets overlooked, leaving clients wanting to change it when it is too late. Talk to a content strategist at the beginning, and save yourself thousands of pounds of reworking later on.

Your eighth problem: you can’t offend your boss

It is often the boss who throws new ideas into the mix when it is too late to incorporate them. She may not be sensitive to the planning and building process so far – she might just be fixated on a particular concept or outcome.

She might suddenly want new sections of content or additional media, or something given priority on the front page to satisfy her ego or her latest creative idea. Whether or not these things are good ideas in themselves is less important than the negative impact on the development of the site – like wanting solar panels on the roof when the house has already been built to take electricity from the grid.

The problem here is that it takes a very brave employee to stand up to his boss and deny her right to play around with the web site even though it is already in production.

In our experience, it rarely happens.

Because you don’t say no to your boss. Especially if your boss is you.

A content strategist knows how web sites work and can stand up to your boss’s latest ideas for the sake of your business. He or she is a third party who helps you all to stick to the plan, as well as taking the better suggestions from your boss and converting them into features that will actually work.

Saving you money in the long run

At Endis Solutions we make web sites for small and medium sized businesses, and we see clients get into these difficulties time after time. Content strategy as a core part of your web site project holds it all together, keeps the site doing what you need it to do for your business, and prevents you from having to pay your way out of a mess later on.

That’s why content strategy is part of the basic web site package. You can’t afford not to have it.

Still suspicious? Why not get a free sample? Or get in touch to talk about what we could plan to build together.

Costly problems content strategy solves for SMEs

You’re running a small business so you want a web site but you can’t afford to waste money. You’re wary of snake oil salesmen who might try to exploit your inexperience with technology. You can only justify expenditure for services that obviously benefit your business.

So when someone offers you “content strategy” as part of a web site, you’re going to be suspicious, right?

Perhaps he tells you that if you don’t get help with your content right at the beginning, you’ll pay for it later. Perhaps he tells you a story about camels to back up his point.

Suspicious?

You should be. You should ask, quite bluntly, what problems does this content strategy solve for me? Seriously – what will actually go wrong if you don’t have it?

Here are the first four problems that content strategy overcomes. The next four are published here.

Your first problem: your content is not good enough

Content means the text, photos, videos, audio, forms and the like on your site. You’re a small business so you want to cut corners. That’s fine. But publishing copy that is full of mistakes, badly written, waffly or childish is not saving you money in the long term.

When your content is too long for the attention of users on the Internet, when it is repetitive, unclear, written in the wrong tone or inconsistently voiced – then you lose customers and undermine your brand by appearing cheap and unprofessional.

You wouldn’t write a magazine. Why do you think you can write a web site?

Your second problem: your existing print content does not work on the web

One way around the first problem is to reuse existing copy from your print media. You’ve got brochures and fliers – why not just put those words and pictures to work on the web site?

The answer is simple: the web is a completely different publishing environment to print. You’ll be pleased to know that people have studied how different they are. I’m not making this stuff up.

Your print copy will be too long. It will be written for a surveying and page-turning experience rather than a scrolling and clicking one. It will probably be too formal and it certainly won’t be written so that Google picks it up in search results. It will not have the essential pieces of information in the parts of the page where your visitors’ eyeballs go, nor will it have microcopy that represents it all around the web. It will assume that people will take time to read it, when online they won’t. And it won’t direct people towards their next action online.

In short, it will fail.

Print copy is a seven course dinner for guests only. Web content must be a space pill for anyone who drops by, or no one will swallow it.

Your third problem: it takes time to produce good content

It’s hard enough as a professional writer to meet deadlines, even with an editor’s reminders or a team to collaborate with. So what happens when your administrator, manager or trainee is suddenly expected to churn out quality writing in a short space of time?

She’ll freeze. He’ll stall. They’ll try to get someone else to do it or just keep putting it off. The project deadline will pass and they will eventually send incomplete or substandard work to your web team, and we’re back to problem one.

Only now it’s really late.

Good content is hard to write and it takes a lot of time. If you try to produce the content yourself because you want to save a bit of money, and then end up delaying the web site launch for months because you are strugging to produce it, then you are costing your business money by holding up the project.

Was this web site important to your business? Would you like it to be? Because expecting your staff to produce the content is like asking them to produce a TV show. It will take them ages to learn how it all works, never mind actually produce anything worth looking at.

Your fourth problem: there are bits of web content that you have never heard of

Who is going to write the metadata? The microcopy? The messages and labels? I’m not inventing these – metadata for example, is the information about the web page, such as the page title, page description, metatags and web address, some of it behind the scenes, all of it essential to the success of your content online. And all of it needing to be carefully written.

The visible words on the page are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to web content. But what is under the water is desperately important, in particular for online search. You need to get the metadata right to improve your site’s findability and usability.

The default, when you don’t get help with your content, is for the designer just to make something up. She may or may not be very good at it. Writing, editing and advising on content is not what she does. She may leave whole portions blank. Is that a risk that you want to take? – did you want a web site that does more than just look good?

If no one can find it or it’s confusing to use, then you’ve wasted the money you paid for it.

That’s only the half of it

In our business of making web sites, we see these four problems over and over again. You can’t afford not to have a professional help with your content. The content plan is the glue that holds the web site design together.

Content strategy is not about fleecing you at your point of uncertainty – it’s about saving you money in the long run, ensuring that the whole fee you pay for a web site is not wasted.

Basically, pay now or pay later. Just like the camel on Mount Sinai.

Next week we’ll look at four more problems that content strategy will solve for your business. Until then, why not grab a free sample of my work, or get in touch to explore how a focus on content now will bring returns for your company in the future?

Gabriel Smy is a writer working on the web. His passion is making things clear. He is a Content Strategist for Fluent, 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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