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Jan 18 2012
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User Engagement, Web Development

The importance of microcopy to your website or app

First off, what is microcopy?

Microcopy refers to the small bits of text on a website such as form labels, form buttons, instructions, error messages, popup tips and action confirmations.

Put another way, these are the parts of your website that visitors pay closest attention to. 

Clearly then, it’s pretty important. Yet for some reason, this is often left in the hands of the developer. Perhaps it is seen as part of the technical build, as it will interface with a database. Perhaps it is not as interesting to a copy writer as the marketing messages on the homepage.

So why is microcopy so important?

I state above that visitors pay closest attention to items such as form labels, buttons, instructions etc, but why?

It is because this is where the user is directly interacting with you. This is where the dialogue is.

Do you point telephone enquiries from a printed brochure to the designer that created it? No. You point them to a specialist within your company who knows all the appropriate information. You point them to someone who not only understands the user/client/customer but can also represent the company in the appropriate manner with the correct language and tone of voice.

So please, don’t leave microcopy to the developers. It is not secondary, it is vitally important to the message you are sending out to your users. It is the first conversation you are having with your users.

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Dec 10 2011
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User Engagement, Web Development

Why you should design for iPads (and other tablets)

There are two main reason why you should make your websites and apps compatible with iPads and other tablets.

1: Future compatibility – the market share is growing

If you look at the usage stats of most sites you’ll see the number of people visiting from tablet devices is slowly but steadily increasing.

The percentage is still quite low in relative terms, and you might not normally focus on such a small subset of users. As it is growing however, with no signs of slow-down, you can be sure that at some point in the future you will be asked why your site doesn’t work well on tablets.

2: Acceptance from influential early adopters and opinion leaders

Although the percentage of users is low in terms of browser stats, the people browsing on iPads and other new generation tablets are  likely to be the early adopters & opinion leaders.

These are the people who’s opinions are respected and requested by others. These are the people you want on your side.

If your site / app works well on the new devices you are more likely to be remembered favourably and recommended to others. If your site goes so far as to surprise & delight then even better.

If your site fails, you will instantly be forgotten and dismissed. Even worse, you may be publicly derided.

Supporting iPads is arguably more important than supporting old versions of IE, even though the latter may have a higher percentage of use on your site.

* Disclaimer: iPad ownership does not directly make one a thought leading, cash rich, decision maker.

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Mar 16 2010
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User Engagement

Formula One teams engaging fans online

The 2010 Formula One season kicked off at the weekend, and the online engagement from a couple of the teams has caught my eye. I’ll own up now that so I’ve only really looked at the British teams. But I’m British and we have a good representation in the sport, so it seemed like a good place to start.

First up: McLaren - http://mclaren.com/home

I’m not actually a big fan of the site design itself. It seems a bit clunky, although there are some nice features – I’m thinking of the scaling images here. But, and I don’t know how they’ve done it, if you try to copy & paste some text from the page this is what you get.

Q:Lewis,youlostgroundatthestarttoNicoRosbergbutgothimbackinthepitstops

What happened to the spaces?! Not very handy for sharing info. Prior to the first race they had a story up that I wanted to send to a friend via MSN. I had to resort to sending a cropped screenshot. Pretty shoddy.

The saving grace, where the site really came alive was during the race. At the top of the screen were live updates of the radio transmission between pitwall & drivers – although these were obviously (and quite reasonably from a tactical point of view) censored. At the bottom of the screen was the geek area. It was awesome! Live telemetry from both cars – lap number, position, speed, % throttle/brake, g-forces, lap-time.

Given that the opening race in Bahrain wasn’t the most exciting, this – in a nerdy way – added a new dimension. Personally, I found it interesting so congratulations to McLaren.

Secondly: Lotus Racing – http://www.lotusracing.my/

Back in F1 for the first time in years this new team have embraced the interactive nature of the social web well.

Their home page is waiting for you to personalise it. There for you is a Twitter feed, a You Tube channel and Flickr Stream – whatever takes your fancy.

My favourite has been the Twitter feed. I’ve been following the feed on the run-up to the start of the season, and the enthusiasm and excitement from this new team has been very infectious. For me it has embodied what can be great about social media. We’ve been more involved than ever before in a Formula One team, their enthusiasm became our enthusiasm, their joy at getting both cars to the end of their first race became our joy.

I’d be interested to hear other opinions on what these and/or other teams have been doing to engage the fans…

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