How We Communicate Before the Call Drops

If there’s a saying about how to communicate properly before things get bad, we agree with it completely.

We’re a design studio, which means we have a bunch of different people with a bunch of different skill sets coming together in order to function as a team.

It sounds easy enough, but unlike a college-level lacrosse team or a boat’s worth of dance professionals, we work remotely.

This means that we have to work a little harder to ensure that nothing falls off.

It’s Friday at 4:54. We get an email from a client “Hey, Entermotion! Can you help us with this urgent issue today?”

We know that the team is starting to sign off, so we have to think quick.

This goes one of two ways:

1. We can take care of the issue now

2. We can’t take care of the issue now

There’s not really an in between.

When something comes up either in our emails or via phone, we make a decision on how to move forward, but once that decision is made, we have to open our mouths (or, in this case, start typing).

• Our clients will receive an email back that either says, “Hey! Thanks for sending this over. We’ll take care of it right now.”
• Or if it’s too late, we’ll say, “Hey! Thanks for sending this over. Unfortunately, everyone’s stepped out for the weekend, but we’ll make sure we tackle this first thing on Monday morning.”

We know that we can’t always take care of every need immediately. We can’t come over and cut your grass for you.

We can’t reupholster your couch.

We probably can’t convince your sister-in-law to host the holiday event this year. That’s on you.

There are a lot of things we can’t do. And we get that.

But we know what we can do– we can manage our client’s expectations so that, even if we can’t get a project done today, everyone knows when we can get it done.

We know that this isn’t a revolutionary idea, and heck, it’s not even a new idea, but it is one of the most important ideas that we carry with us. If we can encourage our clients to effectively communicate their needs and if we can properly communicate our workflow, we’ll be good.

Don’t Migrate. Redesign.

Redesign For Better

We believe in what Paul Boag is saying over here. If you’re doing a site redesign or getting a new domain, content migration shouldn’t even be a thought on your mind.

You’re better off writing new content than dragging your old content over.

It’s sort of like moving. When you move, do you take every single item you own? We know that whenever we move and redesign, we evaluate every item that we have and we take only what we need for our new house. We own a lot of items that might be good for our house now but won’t be good for our new house.

Believe in the Future

When you’re moving to a new site, think creatively about what the new space could look like. We encourage you to forget about the old– at least while you’re trying to actively create new content for your new site.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve been getting fewer and fewer visitors on your old site. It doesn’t matter if you have thousands of pages of content.

And it doesn’t matter if your web copy was working before. Your new site is a place for your new ideas, and you should make sure that you’re taking over only what is needed.

Re-envisioning Will Make You Stronger

You can review your analytics and make sure that you’re focusing on the pages that your prospective readers are actually going to visit. Take note of the pages that your readers enjoy, and focus your rewriting efforts on those pages.

• Check out the types of keywords your visitors search on your site
• Review your most popularly clicked on links
• Analyze the pages your visitors view most frequently

Is everyone searching for interviews? Do most people look directly for sales information and pricing pages? Take note of that information and make sure that your new site highlights that information first.

When you recreate instead of migrate information over, you can make room for new, exciting ideas to come through. And that excitement is worth bringing over to the new site.

How to Fix the Too-Much-Content Problem With Readable Content

We want to save you from TL;DR*.

We want to save your customers from feeling like they need to spend too much time digging through info to find the one fact they need. And finally, we want to help you write readable content that doesn’t overwhelm your readers.

Your landing page should lead people through your sales process easily.

The whole point of readable content is that it helps your readers follow your goals. You want to allow everything to lead up logically to the CTA, so it’s not about more content, it’s about incorporating content wisely. But doesn’t a longer page mean more information? And isn’t information what readers want? Er. Yes and no. Customers don’t care about slogging through content, they want specific, detailed content that’s going to tell them what they need to know right away. The customer comes to your site knowing nothing. It’s your job to explain to them what they should do, why they should do it, and what they’re going to get out of it. If you can provide that information in two sentences, don’t take 10 to say it.

Shift the type of content on your page.

Let’s face it: readers want to scan. They don’t want longform sales pages. Use images to help customers scan the most important content, be led to the CTA easily, and leave with a solid understanding of your product. Images can help you do the following:

• create chunked content
• keep your readers interested visually
• tell your story through multiple mediums
• explain difficult processes with visual elements

Only incorporate a photo that’s doing the work of the content you deleted. The goals is to create a smooth landing page that will lead your readers to your CTA with ease, and if your picture is less functional than a Picasso in a moldy basement, it might be time to rethink it. Cut the content. Focus on the headlines. There’s no hard-and-fast rule for the time you should spend on a headline, but if you want to cut your content, you’ll want to make sure that your headlines are doing most of the heavy lifting. Your headline is arguably the most important part of your landing page because it’s the part that the most amount of people will read. And to make your headline the most effective, you should remember a few simple principles:

• Your headlines should incorporate the benefit — what are customers going to get by visiting your landing page or getting led through your process? No one cares what the thing does, they want to know how it’s going to help them.
• Your headline should be more logical than clever — clever is cute, but logic sells.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. -David Ogilvy

The important thing to remember is that if you provide dynamic, engaging content, clear headlines, and content chunked with appealing images, your readers are going to stick around and they’ll help you hit your goals. The goal of the landing page is to make the sale; so while creativity is going to be important, you have to keep your eye on the goal, and help your customers do the same. *TL;DR stands for too long; didn’t read

What We’re Listening to in June

It’s warming up over here, and we’ve been enjoying the following soothing (and not-so-soothing) sounds around the office. That is, when we’re not listening to lullabies…

Wye Oak – Civilian
Foy Vance – Upbeat Feelgood
Hélène Grimaud – Water
Annie Eve – Elvis
Kaytranada – 99.9%
Cadenza – No Drama
Cocteau Twins – Cherry-coloured Funk
Fiona Apple – Shadowboxer    

Happy Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day! We’ll be enjoying the warmer weather with our family and friends, and will be closed for Memorial Day. We’ll be back in action on Tuesday, May 31st.