Microcopy on the Dogs Trust website

Recently, we’ve written about why microcopy matters and about how copywriting is interface design. This search button labelled as “fetch” is a great example of both. Best in show, you might say.

The search function is where you’d expect to find it (in the top right of the site). And it looks familiar. The microcopy in the box makes it clear what it’s for (to “search the site”). So there’s room to have a little fun with the words on the button. By labelling it “fetch” instead of “search” the function is still clear but you also reinforce your brand’s tone of voice.

Everyone writes “search”. Only the Dogs Trust write “fetch”. Great stuff.

Dan Burgess

“Sustainability is a troublesome word,” says Dan. “I think we could do with a new one.”

What’s wrong with sustainability? ”It’s not an interesting word or a rich word,” explains Dan. “It’s a word that polarises people’s opinions and makes them turn off. It feels restrictive because people think it’s about limiting stuff.”

“Sustainability can be about limiting,” he continues. “But it’s also about happiness and well-being. When you write a marketing or communications brief around sustainability, it’s rare for people to take it to another space — to be really imaginative in their approach.”

“A lot of businesses still think of sustainability in terms of individual issues like recycling, packaging or energy — the fundamental housekeeping. They don’t often talk about better ways of doing business or opportunities to do something beyond selling stuff.”

So what should we say instead of sustainability? Answers on a (recycled) postcard.

The Flickr photo editing interface is a good example of why design needs copywriting

What should you label a button? Do you call it submit or save or something else? In their book about web applications, 37 Signals say copywriting is interface design:

Good writing is good design. It’s rare that words don’t accompany design. Icons with names, form fields with examples, buttons with labels, step by step instructions in a process, or a clear explanation of your refund policy. These are all interface design.

Take the example from Flickr, illustrated above. The site’s all about images. But the successful interface design still relies on good copywriting that helps people do what they want to do. The Flickr edit screen has clear button labels and a prominent instruction that tells people exactly what they can do (and, importantly, what to do next).

This is why I love writing for the web. As a digital copywriter, you’re part of a team that needs to work effectively together to make great websites. And you can tell if you get it right, because your site works and your visitors are happy.

So, the next time anyone tells you that web writing is just about short sentences and keywords, point them in the direction of 37 Signals.

Ed Gillespie

What’s wrong with eco-bling? Well, for a start, engineers have said that unnecessary renewable energy visibly attached to the outside of poorly-designed buildings won’t help us meet emissions targets.

“Eco-bling is like greenwash for the built environment,” says Ed. “You’re not actually getting to the heart of your product or service, you’re just trying to retrospectively or retroactively add a green embellishment onto it.”

But aren’t such grandiose gestures part of human nature? “Maybe eco-bling is modern equivalent of putting a flag on your wigwam or painting your cave,” he says. “It’s putting something out there to change the perception of your building and to make it seem high status.”

Labelling the problem as eco-bling is an important part of changing attitudes, Ed insists. “I think the term greenwash has helped tremendously — giving dubious behaviour a label that people can recognise. The power of an idea like labelling is huge. Clothes swapping isn’t a jumble sale any more, it’s swishing. It’s glamorous, exciting and edgy.”

So how would Ed make energy-efficient measures like insulating your office sound as sexy as the eco-bling he’d like them to replace? “It’s about status and social proof,” he says. “We need to find other ways of badging and labelling well-designed buildings. It needs to be something you can display, something that looks good and something that’s sexier than BREEAM, which you have to be a technology geek to understand.”

How to make green buildings stand out without resorting to eco-bling. That’s one to think about. Thanks Ed.

Imagine if more of us had meetings in camper vans or slid down poles to reach our desks. Maybe then the playful atmosphere would spill into our business writing.

With people encouraged to have fun with words, a new creativity would enliven business meetings. Conferences would reverberate to the sound of rhyming couplets. And — surely — more CEOs would resign by writing haikus.

Of course, there’s one downside. Copywriters would be out of a job.

An address in the heart of London is something you might look for when choosing a copywriter. (After all, there’s nothing quite as good as a face-to-face chat.) Because we use a virtual office in central London, we can pop along to meetings when we need to and our copywriters can work from home or wherever they feel most creative.

Online project management tools and videoconferencing keep our writers connected. More importantly, they keep your copy on track and your costs down. So working with Polon means you’ll pay freelance prices for the peace of mind you get from knowing there’s a whole team supporting you.

Let’s hear it for structure in business writing. Photo: Chris Halderman

I wrote recently about taking three steps to better business writing. Creating a structure for your writing is essential for the first step: being clear.

Structure helps your reader find their way through your text. Once you’ve got a clear structure in place, you can set about making your words really stylish and persuasive.

But how do you build an effective structure?

1. Give yourself a brief

Just like a copywriter, you should set yourself a brief. This helps you focus on your reader and what you need to tell them. So, for example you might say to yourself: “I need to write an email to all staff encouraging them to take part in the company’s volunteering day.”

2. Start at the top

Next, start building your structure. Try putting the roof on first — write the headline to guide you. For example, if you’re composing an email, sum up what you want to say in the subject line. You can always refine it later but it’ll give you something to work from in the meantime. So, if you’re giving people advice on email writing, you might choose something like: “How to write the perfect email.”

3. Write an outline

Now you’re ready to create the outline. You can use bullet points to set out the distinct points you want to make, starting with the most important. But check that each one adds something new to your argument so you don’t let any waffle creep in. You want your structure to be water-tight.

4. Set a word limit

Finally, set yourself a word limit to work within. This will help you choose your words carefully and creatively. You can think of this visually — to fit half a page of A4 paper or a preview screen in Outlook, for example.

In our next post, we’ll show you how to build your argument effectively.

Is it time for some new tricks when it comes to sustainability? Photo: mylerdude

The sustainability stories you see in the media are often like extreme New Year’s resolutions. They’re about going without a bath, living without money or even eating our pets to reduce CO2.

That’s worrying, because (apart from the fact that my dog doesn’t look too tasty) psychologists argue that this approach to changing your lifestyle is doomed to failure. Setting unobtainable goals that you quickly fail to achieve leaves you depressed and demoralized. So let’s set a different New Year’s resolution for sustainability communications: make low-carbon life sound like fun.

In their new report, Sell the Sizzle, Futerra’s sustainability communications specialists set out their solution: we need to talk about the heaven of low-carbon life, not the hell of climate change. The ACT ON CO2 ad is the stuff of nightmares. We need to sell the dream.

That shouldn’t be too hard; there’s already a lot about low-carbon life that’s pretty appealing. When I take the train and not the car, I can relax and get work done. Much of the local organic food I get delivered to my door costs less than it would to fetch it from the supermarket.

Now imagine how much better it would be if I could take a train powered by renewable electricity that got me places even more quickly. What if my food came from a community-owned farm, so I got a portion of the profits as a share of the crops?

Isn’t that a better thing to sell people than the doom and gloom of climate crisis? Of course, there will always be some people who will do the right thing, whatever it takes. And others who won’t do anything unless there’s a financial gain in it for them. But most of us are in the middle—we just need a positive message, and a bit of fun, and we’re there.

If you can make the stairs in our office more fun than the lift, we’ll take them. And this recent Volkswagen campaign shows just how we can make stairs fun.

So if you’re in the business of sustainability communications, make this your resolution for 2010: lighten up, it’s supposed to be fun.

Basecamp uses microcopy to reassure people they can cancel or downgrade

Typically, web writing advice concentrates on longer copy. But (as with so much in life) size isn’t everything when it comes to web writing. You should pay as much attention to the snippets of copy that help people complete online forms or that explain an action succinctly as you would to your ‘about us’ page. Why? Because microcopy matters.

Microcopy guides people

As web designer Joshua Porter points out, well-written microcopy can make things happen a lot more smoothly on your site. Prompt people to enter the same address their credit card is registered to and there’ll be fewer errors. Tell them that registering lets them track their parcels and they’ll be more likely to sign up for an account.

Microcopy makes a well-designed website even more effective. And it does this mainly by reassuring and guiding people. Porter suggests letting people know what they’re getting in to by asking them to sign up to ‘this low-volume newsletter’. He suggests microcopy phrases like ‘you can unsubscribe at any time’ make people more likely to go for it because they know what’s involved.

This is good advice, and something the Basecamp sign-up page shown above does well. The microcopy helps people get over any final reservations about signing up by reassuring them that they can cancel or downgrade at any time. But microcopy can do more than this.

Microcopy reflects your brand

Microcopy should be stylish as well as functional. By paying attention to the tone of even your smallest snippets of copy, you can make sure your site is a credit to your brand. Take this simple sign-up from Moo:

The microcopy on the right in yellow explains simply what to do if you don’t want to change your password. The other piece of microcopy (under the subscribe field) reassures people by letting them know how often they’ll get a newsletter. But, crucially, it does so in the Moo’s playful tone of voice: ‘once a month(ish)’.

Why does this matter? Microcopy that reflects your brand’s tone of voice shows people that you care about the details, that your approach to business runs through everything you do. Combine this with functional writing that guides people through a checkout or registration and you’ve got the ultimate microcopy: a killer combination of substance and style. So go on, knock ‘em dead with that microcopy.

Brainstorming. Photo: Jacob Bøtter

Five steps to compelling copy

Based on James Webb Young’s technique for producing ideas, our copywriting process has five simple steps:

1. The briefing

This is the bit where you tell our copywriters about what you want to achieve. We’ll ask for information about things like your organisation, your product or service and your audience. Take a look at our post on how to brief a copywriter to learn more about this.

2. The research

After the brief, we add the information you give us to ideas we find through research — everything from styles of writing to cultural influences from art or advertising. We look things up, we ask questions, and we scribble everything down until we’re exhausted. Then we nip out for a walk.

3. The walk

Why do we go for a walk? Because the best ideas pop into your subconscious when you’re doing something else. So after we’ve thought really hard about an idea, and gathered all the information we can, we let our subconscious work on it for a while, making the connections that create compelling copy. Read our post about why walking is good for creative thinking for more on this.

4. The ideas

After we’ve chewed things over away from our computers, we head back to the keyboards and pour out all the creative ideas our brains have brewed up. Then we re-work them, write them up — making sure they meet your brief — and send them to you. Writing is a collaborative process, so sharing our ideas and developing them together is an important part of the process.

5. The feedback

Finally, we get your feedback and work with you to polish the ideas, editing and re-editing until they’re ready to go out into the world as finished words. And we don’t let them go until you’re happy. If you’d like to know more about feedback, take a look at our post on how to ask for feedback about your copywriting.