If your design’s wrong, should you really invest in copy?
December 9th, 2008
I’m curious. My gut tells me that if the design of your website or brochure is wrong for your audience, you’re wasting your money investing in copywriting.
Well, maybe not wasting it, but certainly not making the most of it.
First impressions count. And I reckon if your design’s tacky, people will conclude that your product or service is tacky too. So when they read the headline, instead of being already in harmony with you, they’re at odds with you. They’re not ready to be engaged by it, or compelled to read on. They’re ready to doubt it, and to MOVE on.
In fact, I’m convinced that this is true.
What I question is whether you’re likely to get any benefit out of copy at all, with a crap design? Again, my gut tells me that even the best copywriting will make little difference to a site that screams cheap and nasty (unless, of course, cheap and nasty is your niche). My gut tells me you’d be far better off investing some money in a new design. Better yet, invest in a new design AND new copy!
But I don’t have any stats to back me up.
What do you think?
Filed under: Audience, Brochure Copy, Copywriting, Web Copy, design, web design
I agree. Design is a foundation. Copy is content that you build on top of the foundation, at least that’s how I see it.
Interesting Glenn. I’d say it depends a lot on the product. If you’re selling cables or fishing rods, your design doesn’t need to be fancy, but you need to have decent copy or at least well-optimised copy.
Then again, “design” with a website encompasses a lot more than the visual. In general I’d say the #1 thing to get right in a site is UI design (no use having gorgeous design OR brilliant copy if they can’t find the buy button), followed by copy, followed by visuals/branding…but with some products #2 and #3 can be reversed. (The nicest sites are the ones where you can’t tell where one of these leaves off and the next begins.)
Another thing to bear in mind is that if you’re broke you can build a reasonable-*looking* site nowadays using a template, but content will always have to be made to order. (I hope!)
I certainly agree with Angus. Usability and content are tied for first in my opinion. Without decent content, no one will find you or be interested in buying. At the same time, if you can’t make money from the site, the site isn’t going to do you much good.
A few sites I read on a daily basis have downright terrible designs. They are overloaded with links, adds and buttons. In addition to this, I only have my browser open half way most of the time and it makes it difficult to find the actual post.
Once I found the subscribe button, I was able to avoid the site and enjoy the content. There may be something to that as well.
Good content can’t overcome horrific design, but it can work in virtually any environment that retains basic usability.
Your point is spot-on, though. Miserable design reduces the value of content wildly. I often find sites that would do better with nothing but blank white pages and text than with what they have.
I have an affiliate marketing project where I’m using an incredibly simple landing page as a pre-sell. It’s basically a simple letter format with about five paragraphs of text.
That little page has outperformed five previous incarnations by a 2:1 margin. Earlier versions were pretty, well-designed, etc. I found that in this particular case, “words alone” were the best way to get the job done.
Guess my point is that “good design” doesn’t even need to be “wow, look at that” design. It’s all about usability and making that first impression you mention.
That’s one reason why I’ll chime in with my 2 cents worth when writing for clients who are using material in a lousy environment. It’s also why I think every writer should make friends with a few A++ design people.
Good post!
By saying “design is wrong” I would assume that the design will not work for the intended audience. This is different from the design being beautiful, funky, appealing, attractive etc.
Some brands absolutely purposefully present themselves as “cheap” ones and their design will reflect that – and it works!
You can take a horse to water…
I agree that if the design is WRONG FOR THE INTENDED AUDIENCE (sorry for the uppercase, I didn’t mean to yell here, just highlighting), then even if we get a crowd of people coming to our site from search engines, they will not be willing to transact. The next-step conversion of that landing page will be very low.
The good news is that, in most cases, the visual impression of a page can be improved very quickly and easily. Try some of these: nice headline image, cool edges around your main content areas, slick buttons.
The tricky bit is how to discover what would be good design for our intended audience. Luckily, A/B and multivariate testing are online marketer’s best friends.
Thanks Bo. Definitely what I meant by “wrong”. You hit the nail on the head!