How the BBC has discouraged me from ever filling in a website feedback form again

I went to the BBC news website this afternoon, to be greeted by this chipper message:

“Wow!” I thought. “The BBC need me to help them keep their finger on the pulse! Of course I have 5 minutes for them. Although I do want to know what the Queen and Jordan (aka Katie Price, not the country) have in common.*” Exactly whose pulse the Beeb are trying to check wasn’t clear, but could it maybe perhaps maybe have anything to do with selling their soul to advertisers? In any case, I emphatically click ‘yes’.

What is the contry of my residence? I click on the UK.

Oh noes! Only international visitors can waste time filling in the survey. Game over. And yet, I still need to click the ‘finish’ button. Where might that take me?

…to another useless screen. My input has been greatly appreciated. Oh that’s nice. Of course it would’ve been nicer to have a link back to the news website which I was trying to visit in the first place, or even – gosh, this is crazytalk mind – to be told that I wasn’t eligible to fill in the survey four screens ago.

*Turns out they’re both considered extremely glamorous, but in very different ways.

Click here! Click here! Click here!

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t ever hyperlink the words ‘click here’, right? Well that’s all wrong, believes Brian Clark of Copyblogger. As he explains,

“I’ve always been a big proponent of having actionable anchor text for links when I really want someone to click. From a copywriting standpoint, it’s a no brainer—it’s been proven time and time again that if you want someone to do something, you’ll get better results if you tell them exactly what to do.”

But although that attitude implies that Brian thinks his readers are thick, in his opinion it’s actually the desire to hyperlink with anything other than ‘click here’ that demonstrates stupidity:

“Another reader once chastised me for wasting anchor text with the words “click here,” even though my primary goal for the link was to get people to click (shocking, I know). This is when I first realized that Google is truly making people retarded. Somehow, this person no longer saw links as navigation for actual people to use; they only exist to pass on “juice” according to an algorithm that no one fully understands.”

Brian quotes some statistics from an experiment on a marketing newsletter which tested different click words. It seems to back up his theory: linking the words ‘Click to continue’ improved the click-through rate by 8.53%, ‘Continue to article’ improved the rate by 3.3%, and ‘Read more’ decreased the rate by 1.8%.

However, there are three major flaws in his argument.

Firstly, the statistics quoted are meaningless are we have no idea how many people took part in the experiment, how many times it was conducted or what kind of control they used. And 87% of scientists agree that without this information your stats are useless.

Secondly, the purpose of links is not simply to lead people to somewhere else. Readers scan pages online, looking for keywords. Since links are almost invariably highlighted in a different colour and/or underlined, making key phrases and words links helps readers find what they need.

Thirdly, as Brian acknowledges, links make Googlejuice. And what, exactly, is so wrong with writing copy that benefits both readers and search engines? So what if your click-through rate to another page on your website is down by 1.8% because you don’t link with the phrase ‘click here’. Boo hoo. Your Google rank for that page will be higher, and your readers will find it much faster. I think that’s more than a fair trade-off.

In conclusion, the only time you should really have to link the word ‘click’ is if your design is so utterly confusing that you have a button that doesn’t look like it will link anywhere, and you need to actually tell people to use it. Copywriters don’t work in a vacuum. It’s not crazy to think that we should work with rather than against web designers and web developers to produce readable, effective websites.

“Do not put in the custard”

Found in my office kitchen.

When signs go bad #5

A disturbing sign found in the window of a shoe shop in Newcastle.

“Hyphens are dying!” declares hysterical BBC

In what must surely be a slow news day, the BBC solemnly reports that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has removed hyphens from 16,000 words. Hyphens are “enjoying [sic] a difficult time at the moment”, apparently.

As usual, the blame lies in the internet. We’re so busy busy busy writing emails that we don’t have time for hyphens. “When you are sending e-mails, and you have to type pretty fast, on the whole it’s easier to type without hyphens,” exaggerates Geoffrey Leech, former professor of linguistics and English language at Lancaster University.

But why, as a self-confessed linguistics geek, am I being so sneering about this news? Uh, because it isn’t news.

Generally speaking, new compound words use hyphens to make their meaning more obvious. Electronic mail might at first be abbreviated to e mail. But that lonely e might be confusing, so it hold hands with its other half in e-mail. As the word becomes more commonly used, the two halves are considered a whole, and email finally emerges, independent and triumphant.

The truth, of course, is that the hyphen will never die. Not when there are lonely affixes to stick before, in and after words. It’s got nothing to do with the internet. To-morrow and good-bye once had hyphens, and then they lost them too. Boo-flippin-hoo.

Obligatory ‘weird things that you’re googling to get here’ post

What’s the best thing about blogging? Knowing that people other than your friends and family (Hi dad!) read your blog. And I know strangers read this because I have thousands of readers. (well, ok, tens usually… but thousands if you count that time I got 9,500 views in a day thanks to a weirdly popular reddit story.)

But the point is that thanks to the power of WordPress I know that there are people I don’t know personally who stumble upon this. So…

Hi there! Judging by what you’re searching for when you find this I’m not entirely sure I want you to stick around. Only kidding! I love you. I love all my readers. I’m desperate for attention. Never leave me, ok? I’ll give you everything you ever want. Which incidentally happens to be:

“wincy shek“. What is this? I have no idea. But a few people have found Hookjab by googling for it. Which is strange, as I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it before now.

“how bad is the Tornado F3” Really? I think it’s kinda cool.

“Kylie” “KYLIE” “Kylie Minogue” Not really what you were looking for, huh.

“a word for ”Im right and your wrong‘” …and yet without an apostrophe you’ll always be wrong.

“hookjab” “hook jab” Writing that ‘hooks’ you in to ‘jab’ you with ‘punchy writing’! Geddit? This is a blog about writing that uses boxing terms as weak puns! how clever is that.

“some of my best friends are graphic” Is this a confession or a boast? I’m intrigued.

“Address for May & Kilner, Solicitors” Sorry, never heard of them.

“Press release” “How to write a press release” “tips for writing a great press release” Actually something relevant! Consider this my gift to you.

“Animated clipart of boy writing” Not here, not now, not ever. Go away.

“bbc 1997 website” Hilarious isn’t it.

“writing email on hotmail and lost it” Aw, bad luck. And you came here looking for help presumably, and I gave you nothing. So have some retrospective sympathy.

“catriona irving you are so beautiful” Yes she is, but she’s also a good friend of mine and it’s weird that you’re pouring your heart into google. She can’t hear you through the internet, y’know, and for that I am glad. Now back off, weirdo.

Content makes up half of all time spent on internet

Content really is king on the internet. Research issued by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that people spend more than half of their internet time browsing content, whether that be video, audio or humble ol’ written words.

Specifically, 50.9% of internet users’ time is spent on content (any sites or applications that provide news, information and entertainment); 30.4% is spent on communications (such as email and forums); 14.1% is on commerce (shopping websites) and 4.6% is on searching (getting to all of the above).

Not only are we all absorbing more content than anything else, we’re doing it waaaay more than we used to: in July 2006 just 39.6% of time was spent on content.

According to the OPA, there are several reasons for the increase in time spent consuming content:

• Improvement in searching, allowing consumers to find the exact content they want faster and more easily
• The increased popularity of video
• A more accessible and faster internet means more time spent online in general
• Simply far more content on the internet than there used to be
• More efficient communication methods like instant messaging, which mean that communicating via the internet just doesn’t take as long as it used to

Personally (and unscientifically, of course) I think the increase in high quality content also has a lot to do with the proliferation of huge news websites (eg BBC Online, Guardian Unlimited) and sites such as Wikipedia have helped ordinary, nervous people to trust what they read on the web. The internet is no longer second fiddle to the printed page when it comes to accessible trustworthy information; and as a result people use it more.

I’d also be interesting to see more detailed research – the media breakdown of different content types, for example, or exactly how social networking sites are messing up the neat content/communication distinction.

But in any case, there are still three massive problems with the research.

1. The first is that it discounts quite a huge proportion of websites: all .gov, and .edu were excluded from the study. It’s not exactly clear why, or why only governmental and educational sites from the US were excluded, when those of other countries were presumably still counted.
2. Secondly, pornographic domains were also excluded. Why so coy? This isn’t a matter of morals. If we’re talking hard facts (ahem) then it’s important to note that last year 13% of all websites visited in the US were pornographic. So why not tell us how this fits in to the wider picture?
3. And thirdly, the problem with the research is… well I’m kinda embarrassed to admit this, but I found it on the internet. So it’s probably not true.

The 14th century: not the most charming age

While researching the history of town/gown problems for a feature I’m writing, I came across the website of Richard Herring (comedian of ‘Lee and Herring’ fame).

Somewhat surprisingly, he had quite a lot to say about the issue of students vs locals. And since it’s both educational and amusing I thought I should share…

“It happened on St Scholastica’s Day (February 10th) in 1354. St Scholastica (literally “she who has the leisure to study”) incidentally is the patron saint of convulsive children, nuns and storms. Her patronage also extends to being “against rain,” which seems a bit short-sighted in the long run. Sure useful for days when you’re having a barbecue, but if she proves too effective we’re all going to get a bit thirsty.

“Anyway on her day in 1354 some posh students were drinking in the Swyndlestock Tavern in Oxford and accused the landlord of serving them “indifferent wine”. The regular non-University punters of the establishment took exception to their attitude and the argument escalated into a full-blown riot. The townsfolk beat and killed the Gownsfolk and ransacked their colleges for three glorious days before order was restored.

“Nowadays, thanks to political correctness gone mad, attacking students is against the law, but I believe in honour of this historical event we should make an exception for St Scholastica’s Day. On this occasion all decent, ordinary, hard-working normal people are allowed to absent themselves from their place of labour and search out University students. If they discover any they must playfully batter them round the head with twigs, branches or iron bars, but the beating MUST STOP once the student is dead.

The only place where students might seek sanctuary from this charming tradition is within the confines of their library and even then only if they are studying within its environs. So ironically whilst everyone else gets the day off to hunt down students, St Scholistica’s Day is the only day of the year when students actually have to do any work. But as long as all the students stay in the library, the rest of us can stay in the pub with our feet up, drinking indifferent wine to our heart’s content. Sweet!”

I’m on yr facebk, lolling yr wordz

I’m on Facebook, of course. To my surprise I recently got an out-of-the-blue from one of my old friends:

“yr is multipurpose. get over it”

I’m guessing that was his response to the fact that one of my Facebook groups is ‘If you can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re” you deserve to die’.

But then I am also a member of the group ‘im n ur facebk loling ur pix’, ‘I support the campaign to make “James Blunt” cockney rhyming slang’, ‘I’ve licked the end of a battery just to see what it was like’ and ‘I don’t use my Wii-mote’s wrist strap because I live life on the edge’. And I don’t even have a Wii. (Although my ex housemate did, and it’s true I didn’t use the strap when I was feeling particularly reckless).

But I suppose it’s no great surprise that my friend thought I was being too pedantic. After all, on this very blog I’ve seethed with anger over misplaced apostrophes on estate agent boards and mocked spelling mistakes on websites. You’d be forgiven for thinking that I really care about using English correctly.

And I do. But – and it’s a big but – only when it matters. Websites, public signs, adverts, emails to clients: these matter. Bad use of standard English in your job makes you look like a twerp, basically.

But for everything else – personal emails, texts, even post-it notes – I really don’t care. You can fling your apostrophes up your bum if you like; I’ll be cool as cucumber. I’ll only deathwish the ‘your/you’re’ offenders during the hours of 9-5.

And as for ‘yr’ – yes it is multipurpose, and I happen to like it very much. So there, Paul-Simon Geddis. I can be all crazy and unpredictable too. Just ask anyone who’s seen me on the Wii.

If you’re going to write your own damn copy, at least do it right

Bad web writing hurts your readers’ eyes and your website’s credibility.

A website – nay, the entire internet – is nothing without good solid content. And even counting Youtube and iTunes, the vast majority of the content on the net is written. So why is the copy always at the end of the queue when it comes to building a website?

You can have the most beautifully designed website in the world, complete with the fanciest of applications and gizmos, but if it reads like it’s been written by a sugar-stuffed chimp then wave goodbye to your sales, search rankings and bottom line.

You want me to give you a juicy example, right? Try alteredstatesuk.com. The homepage copy is made up of 86 words. This includes two spelling mistakes, five punctuation errors and 10 faults concerning capital letters. And that’s not even counting some really nasty formatting and sentence formation.

At this point I should say that I’m not trying to kick down a small business out of sheer malicious pleasure. Neither am I touting for business. Yes, of course I could polish it up into sparkling, elegant copy, but that’s not the point. (I do, of course, believe that hiring a good web copywriter is the single most useful thing you can do when you need a website, but I’ll leave that particular topic for another day.)

Maybe you think you’re some webby hotshot and have built your own site. Maybe you’ve already spent all your website money on some fancypants designer. Maybe you’re just cheap. Whatever the reason, if you insist on writing your own damn copy, consider these five tips my gift to you. Together we can make the internet a less painful place.

5 tips for writing good web copy

1. Don’t write as you talk. A friendly, chatty tone is surprisingly difficult to get right. Get it wrong and you sound flippant and sarcastic. But don’t be getting all fancy either. Long words when short ones would do fine make you look arrogant, not clever.

2. Keep it short. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. Reading web pages is a lot slower than reading printed pages, so your website visitors will get impatient faster.

3. Give us what we want. This is a pretty big point, but it basically boils down to this: people come to your website for info, not waffle. Don’t write what you want to say, write what they want to read. Don’t know what that is? Well ask them, stupid!

4. Spelling, grammar, punctuation. These three guys are your new best buddies who will instantly make you look a whole lot smarter and more professional. If you’re not sure who they are, then maybe it’s time you were reacquainted.

5. Proofread. Print out what you’ve written, and give it to someone else to check. Don’t do it yourself, as your brain will ignore the mistakes it made the first time round. Don’t let your friend check your copy on a screen, as I guarantee they will miss something. Give them a big red pen so they feel all official too.

So there you have it. You too can be a copywriter. Of course, if you really write like a chimp or you just can’t be bothered, I am (ahem) available for hire…