The Night Ride
This past weekend I rode in a Portland tradition called The Night Ride. Sponsored by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) in Oregon, they hold a variety of fun rides throughout the year, including the Bridge Pedal which attracts 12,000 riders. The Night Ride had about 1200 riders. Proper attire was “pajamas or costumers” and I […]
Whether or Not to Publish Your Prices
In The Business Oasis, an earlier incarnation of our business Community, one of the members wrote: “I am unsure if it’s a good idea to include my fees in my brochure and on my website.” Good question: do you or don’t you include your price? If you don’t include pricing, are you being coy and […]
The Danger of Metaphors in Your Marketing
You’re trying to make a point to a potential client, either in person or on your website. “And that problem is like tripping on a toy, and spilling red wine onto your brand new white rug, in the middle of a business dinner where you’re trying to impress certain guests.” Your client nods and makes […]
Avoiding the Horror of the Sliding Scale
I know a healer who charges “between $25 and $1000- whatever you think it’s worth to you.” Seems like an enlightened, trust-the-universe approach, eh? Kinda sweet, kinda generous. Kinda mean. Mean? How can a sliding scale payment offer like that be mean? Money is a funny subject. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha. Rich or poor, […]
Right Pricing, or Pricing for Exclusivity
You know the price you want to charge. But, you worry. You worry that some people won’t be able to pay. More than that, you worry about issues of social and economic justice. You worry whether the price that feels good to your heart is somehow ‘wrong’ or off-the-scale of morality. Especially when the people […]
How the Kitchen Sink Drains Your Repeat Business
Okay, here comes someone who takes you up on one of your offers. And they come back again, and again, and again. They buy everything you’re offering, as quickly as you can offer it. They don’t even want to read your sales copy- they just say, “Yes, please, may I have some more?” It’s more […]
When It's Okay to Hype Your Customers
The need for integrity is one of the biggest roadblocks to marketing your business. Of course you don’t want to manipulate people to buy through fear or other hype-tactics. So you soft-peddle your offers. Or avoid offering at all. Need integrity? Check. Need customers to purchase? Check. What to do? What is ‘Hype’? One definition […]
Giving the Awkward News That You’re Raising Your Prices
The time has come- you’ve been waiting for it and dreading it at the same time. The time when you must, absolutely must, can’t avoid it. You’ve got to raise your prices. You’re sure about it, 100%, and it feels good when you think about it all on your own. Except… How DO you tell […]
From Grok dot Com: The Web's Old Wives Tale: People Don't Read Online
Bryan Eisenberg wrote this post on the Grok.com blog: The Web’s Old Wives Tale: People Don’t Read Online
The post is particularly interesting, because he mentioned an eyetrack study from the Poynter Institute, (you know, eyetrack is when they use infrared, I believe, to track where someone is actually looking on the screen.)
And they saw that people do read online, many quite thoroughly.
Of particular note is that because some people don’t read thoroughly, they scan, design becomes even more important.
Sean D’Souza have both helped me to learn a lot about website design and readability.
If you are wanting to put content up on the web, I have some tips on how to make it readable. Please note, I’m well aware that this blog is NOT a good example… yet! Dawud is hard at work redesigning it this week.
Tips on how to make your online content more readable:
1. Margins-
Make sure that there is white space -around- your text- that columns and other design elements aren’t crunched together.
The white space gives room for the reader’s eye to actually “enter” the space. If the space is full of stuff, it’s hard for someone to look at and enter it.
2. Use Subheads-
Subheads are really helpful. Make the font size slight larger, and use them every 3-6 paragraphs or so.
Subheads help the reader to know where they are going, so they can settle in. Sometimes people scan the subheads quickly, and then go back and read. Or if they hit a part of your writing that they find boring, instead of clicking away, they may just jump to the next subhead and re-engage.
3. Short paragraphs.
Here I’ll just reproduce what I wrote in Creating Heart-Centered Websites
The BIGGEST Reason People Aren’t Reading What You Write
The answer is two words: paragraph length.
You want to use short paragraphs in your emails.
Really short.
You also want to use short paragraphs on your blogs. And on your website. And in your articles. And in your book. And in your email replies to interested people.
I’m not kidding. Because when you write really, really long paragraphs by email and they go on and on without stopping about every last thing you want to say, then it becomes this block of text that’s hard to read and follow. Your readers become frightened to start the paragraph, and, if they do actually start the paragraph, they get lost in the middle and never reach the end. And if they never reach the end, then they never see the next paragraph and basically the gig is up, because they’ve missed the point of what you were writing about, and you may as well never have written in the first place. And, because you lose them as readers you never hear back from them, you’ve gotten no response and so you can start to feel frustrated. Then angry. Then sad. Then you begin to fill with despair and wonder if anyone cares about you at all, and whether you should even be in business, or even in the world. Maybe you should just give it all up and go get a job in a cafe. When, it’s really not that bad, it?s just because your paragraphs were too long. Make sense? Short paragraphs. No more than three or four lines.
‘Nuff said.
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Those are my tips. There are others, such as not putting patterns behind your text, not putting too many elements on the page, etc, etc.
But these three are the biggies, and will help a lot.
LA Times: "Don't Email Me"
Today I read at the Grok.com blog about a column by Joel Stein of the LA Times (read it here.)
There were a lot of comments about whether Joel was being arrogant, stupid, publicity-seeking, or using reverse psychology.
But there was interesting comment near the end of Joel’s column- I’ll just reproduce what I wrote on Grok.com’s blog here: