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Is Your Website Copy More Important Than Your Information Architecture?
June 16th, 2009 | by Peter Cullen |“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as from your own” – Henry Ford
The ‘other person’s point of view’ . When visitors come to your website, what is their point of view and can you ’see things from their angle as well as from your own’? It’s not easy…
“The only way on earth to influence the other fellow is to talk about what he wants and show him how to get it” – Dale Carnegie
When visitors come to your website do you show them what they want and make it easy for them to get it? It’s not easy…
Most website owners talk about themselves on their homepage – ‘Welcome to our website…’ sound familiar?
One of the key’s to understanding the psychology of online persuasion is know what your target market is looking for and giving it to them.
This sounds easy, but it’s incredibility difficult and explains why a 5% conversion rate on a website is considered good.
If 100 people walked into your shop/hotel/business and asked for some information about your product/service, would you be happy if only 5 of them became a new customer?
What’s meant by online psychology? I think it’s quite different to psychology off-line. For me best pratice web design, a hierarchy of web pages that actually makes sense and giving people what they are used to seeing is the starting place for ‘online psychology’. Give them a familiar experience, i.e. give them a feeling of ‘this is the way a website should be’ …
I’ve read a lot about online copywriting and using psychology in your copy to impact on conversion, i.e. getting more sales from your website – the question I am left with is that which is more important to getting better than 5% conversion – better copy or better architecture?
I guess it’s a combination of both, but a poor website architecture can have a more destructive impact than poor copy.
Let’s look at a couple of examples – www.amazon.com and www.netaporter.com – do they put more effort into their architecture or their web copy?
The attention to detail on these two websites is amazing. Look at Amazon – at the top of the page there’s a search facility – search for whatever you want!
Search by department!
Have a look at ‘Today’s Deals’ or ‘Gifts & Wish Lists’ .
They make it incredably easy to find things on the website.
What about Net a Porter? Again some great architecture. Again a ‘Search’ facility at the top of the page. The navigation at the top brings you easily down into more information, e.g. Shoes ->All Shoes ->Flats ->Mid Heals ->High Heels -> Boots. The URL at this stage is http://www.net-a-porter.com/Shop/Shoes
These approaches look very simple to implement, but simple doesn’t always mean easy. Take a look at Nike.com
This is the URL of the homepage: http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/language_select/
Simple, clean, smooth architecture?
Now try and find womens shoes! How many clicks can you do it in? It took me 5 clicks to get to here –
So, on Net a Porter it takes me 1 click, on nike.com it takes me 5 clicks to get to the shoes ‘department’
Compare the two URL’s above (Nike.com and Netaporter.com) and image how much easier it is for the search engines to determine relevancy. I know Nike.com is a huge brand and they are obviously relying on that to get them traffic.
(Funnily enough though, if you search for ’shoes’ on Google.com, Nike.com appears before NetaPorter, maybe more to do with Vince.
In this case I know the brands are strong, but the Nike.com site is incredibly complicated for what’s it’s actually doing. The Net a Porter site immediately looks at my IP address, sees where I am and gives me what I want for that country. It takes Nike.com 5 clicks to get me to the right country page!
Remember, this is all before I start looking at the content or images.
Getting the information architecture right, i.e. simple to follow, has a large part to play in getting more conversions.
Thinking too much about the psycholgy of online selling, whilst ignoring basic navigation is not the way to go.
The use of so much flash on the nike.com website maybe appealing to those higher senses in the human brain, but am I likley to stick around trying to find those pages?
What do you think?
Have you seen examples of websites where it’s all about image. Who’s to blame for websites with no/little information architecture – the website owners?
What about B2B sites, are these any different from B2C sites?
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9 Responses to “Is Your Website Copy More Important Than Your Information Architecture?”
By Roseanne Smith, IIA Membership Manager on Jun 19, 2009 | Reply
Hi Peter,
A very thought-provoking post. I have to admit one of the thoughts that it is provoking is why you are searching for women’s shoes but I digress…
Having recently attended a workshop on advanced analytics I wonder if it’s possible that part of the issue for Nike is that they are not seeing a return on their investment and therefore the online team are finding it hard to make the case for further investment…? Also Nike’s business model may not rely so much on this kind of direct selling as the sales they will make on the likes of Netaporter etc. But with tweaked architecture and the ability to undercut competitors they could make a killing.
By the way I tweeted this post.
Have a great weekend!
Rosaenne
By Peter Cullen on Jun 20, 2009 | Reply
Hi Rosaenne,
Thanks for the comment. Womens shoes! Obviously only used to make the point!
Not sure what the deal is with Nike, but they definetly have some issues.
I would have thought that in the B2C online retailing market place, having a strong, clear, understandable website is critical to sucess?
By Nita kapadia on Jul 10, 2009 | Reply
As a web content writer, i was curious to know your view.What you said sounded very interesting.I’ve written content for
http://www.terraventures.co.in
How do i survey it for traffic?I do not know how much traffic it’s getting.
sincerely,
nita
By Partha on Aug 20, 2009 | Reply
“Who’s to blame for websites with no/little information architecture – the website owners?…..”
None other than the self-acclaimed heads of business who seem to know everything under the sun, even if they may not not a jack shit!
By MikeY on Aug 20, 2009 | Reply
Peter:
Thought provoking articles and information such as this is the one main reason I keep coming back to the Web for my higher education. Thank you.
(Note: Although I often wonder whether the addiction is worth it!)
Who is to blame?
I can’t talk about the heavy hitters as you reference. I am a DIY guy trying to teach others what I learned in creating a successful niche for my wife’s Web business.
But, from a mini- and micro-business perspective, it is the Website owner who is ultimately responsible. The qualifying word here is OWNER.
By Andrew MacLeod on Aug 20, 2009 | Reply
Peter – I’m a PR who spent 35 years as a journalist/business editor, so I may be a little biased. The gurus always tell us that content is king – and I take that to mean that web pages should be written in a clear and accessible way. Too often that’s not the case.
But the architecture of a website can cause me to click off in a few seconds. Why wouldn’t I when there are dozens of other sites I can move on to?
Biggest bugbear? The site owners who are determined to do absolutely everything online, and go to great pains to hide their telephone details and addresses.
There are times (the majority in fact) when you can’t resolve your problem by scanning the FAQ page, and want a human being to talk to.
By Peter Cullen on Aug 20, 2009 | Reply
@MikeY – Thanks for dropping by – good point about website owners – question is though, how many are swayed by their web designer?
@Andrew – Just noticed we haven’t updated our FAQ page in a while, thanks for the input.
By Jeremiah on Nov 10, 2009 | Reply
I have to agree with the first poster: Roseanne Smith. While I understand your analogy, Nike’s site is more of a marketing tool than a sales mechanism.
What you are really showing is the case of a site that is designed for the purpose to generate sales, versus a site that is designed with the purpose to generate a buzz.
Nike, as a brand, obviously doesn’t need their site to sell shoes. It is the same purpose driven reasoning based on desire and distribution of a product that means I can’t buy a Pepsi on their site, or a Wii on Nintendo’s site.
Moving to a model where these companies would sell a high volume directly from their site would put at risk their model of selling to vendors that would need to sell the product at a markup.