MrQwest

Last week, I came across Jeremy Keith’s huffduffer – a service for creating your own podcast of ‘found sounds’ that you find online.

A good thing about this service is that it also lists audio found by others. Riding at the top of the most popular ‘found sounds’ was Relly Annett-Baker’s talk at @media earlier this year titled ‘All The Small Things’. I follow @RellyAB on Twitter but don’t really know a lot about what she does except she’s good with copy.

So I downloaded the audio file, loaded it onto my iPod and listened on my way home from work.

What got me about Relly’s talk is that she is so enthusiastic about what she does, she knows her stuff and knows how to convey the message so that everyone understands! I was gripped by her talk, so much so I’ve listened through a couple of times already and will be handing a copy to our marketing dept at work so they can understand the importance of copy!

What I took from her talk though is that just the simplest changes to some micro-copy can make the world of difference to the end user!

I also noted that as web designers, developers & web ‘creationists’ (I hate that word), we sometimes think that the copy we write can be understood by all, where in actual fact – it can only be understood by those who work with the web. There’s no point telling an end-user that there’s an ‘Error 404 – file not found’. What the hell does that mean to anyone who doesn’t understand it?

We understand it, we know there’s a page or file missing somewhere & we know how to fix it or what to do when we come across that message, but to Joe Soap who uses the internet for the odd email & browsing the BBC website, a ‘File Not Found’ error message is jargon.

In fact, the ‘File Not Found’ error message sounds like it was written by a techie trying to reach out to Joe Soap & speak simply – but failed.

A simple change to something like “Oh no, the page you’re trying to visit isn’t here anymore, but let’s try to find it for you” and then put a search box or some options to at least direct the user elsewhere.

A lot of what Relly said made sense and it’s certainly made me think about the way I deal with copy & how I should ‘direct’ the user along a path to their goal! I’m no expert at copy, but this talk has certainly helped me understand it better.

If you work on the web, if you’re ever in a situation where you need to write copy for a website or a form or anything related to it, I urge you to take download / listen to Relly’s talk!

Download / listen to Rellys talk via WebDirections.org

Why not join the discussion?

1. 

   Sam Hardacre | Jul 28, 09:01 AM | Permalink

   Totally agree mate. The great thing about these kinds of talks is some of the solutions are so simple yet we are all guilty of missing them.

   A brilliant example of how small changes can make big differences :)
2. 

   Andy Carter | Jul 29, 04:18 PM | Permalink

   Your example of the 404 page is excellent. It’s one of those pages that’s so easy to ignore when designing and developing a website, but one that can end up being really important if the end user finds themselves there. You don’t want to scare off visitors by making them think your site’s broken; you want them to get back on track using the site.

   I’ve been pushing recently for us to take this page seriously at work when we build new sites and make it part of the whole design process. I think the message is getting through.
3. 

   MrQwest | Jul 29, 04:51 PM | Permalink

   Andy, it’s funny – I’ve never really paid much attention to it either, but it all makes sense now.

   Previously, I’ve shown the error message, and sent the user back to the homepage, or provided a search box but no real explanation.

   I’m in the middle of a site design at the moment, so spent a good portion of time last night tweaking the 404 page.

   It was actually fun to do!

   @ Sam, exactly! It doesn't take a lot to improve the user experience immensly!