I’ve often heard there are four stages along the road to competence: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Most of us begin our careers “unconsciously incompetent,” or unaware of how much we don’t know.
I’ll never forget the first time I moved from unconscious to conscious incompetence. I was working as an office manager at a... Read More
Many dismiss copywriting as something that ad agency people do. Truthfully, all of us need to pay close attention to copywriting if we want to achieve our business objectives.
The goal of a "regular" text is to inform or entertain. The goal of Web copy (and ideally your website in general) is to get people to do something—to sign up, make a purchase, or something similar. Hiring a... Read More
AIDA. Attention, interest, desire, action. It’s the classic copywriting formula, studied and used by almost every copywriter on the planet. Well, I’m not a fan. Not because it isn’t accurate, and not because it doesn’t work. If your writing can get attention, grab interest, create desire and prompt action, then you’re doing a lot of things right.
If your writing isn’t doing these... Read More
No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words. If a new website is going to hit all the right notes, its content must be just as well crafted as its design and programming.
... Read More
Today, we’re excited to present you with a free icon set, called Style Guides. Perfect for websites with an editorial flair, Style Guides features 14 high-quality icons ranging from 32×32 to 512×512 pixels. Designed by Thomas McGee of WinePress of Words, this set has been exclusively released for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Adapted and expanded from a previous set, Style Guides... Read More
Content strategy is a beast with many heads, names and trajectories. To approach it is to be sucked in full force. Even so, as crucial as content strategy is, conveying its gravity to a big audience, or to key administrators, is often hard. Being so inherently complex, it’s often easiest to tackle by example.
My first job as a Web content writer involved creating a campaign that... Read More
Content, content, content. It’s an obvious part of any interactive experience. In fact, you’ve probably heard content is king, or queen, or some sort of royalty. Yet, content is elusive. Often, you don’t realize your content isn’t cutting it until it’s too late. Does any of this sound familiar? Delayer projects, broken designs, uneven voice or low-performing landing pages.
These... Read More
Quality product descriptions can transform e-commerce conversion rates — it's common to see increases of 30-100%. As well as converting more visitors, search traffic increases drastically when unique copy is written for each product. Most online retailers use manufacturers' copy or rely solely on images to sell products. They then use inadequate copy elsewhere on their site and fail to achieve... Read More
Good design speaks for itself, right? Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Most of us don’t have the privilege of designing for ourselves; we design for clients, clients who have their own taste and ideas, clients who ultimately need to be persuaded on why we’ve made certain decisions. Good design doesn’t speak for itself; it needs an advocate.
This article examines both why design... Read More
