Offering a new perspective on design, which I extended my product management work, Ted Boren muses on giving your design “tough love.”

We all know that the majority of the copy we write for the web goes unread and unappreciated. To some extent that’s our own fault – it’s bad, boring or it’s in the wrong place. People read quickly, and most know right away if they are interested – so what can you do to make your copy more interesting?
Enter the headline.

I have collected some thoughts from a few articles I just read that should shed some light on the importance of a good headline.

CopyBlogger.com quotes an approach from American Writers & Artist, re-quote below, which is dubbed the 4 U’s approach to writing headlines:

1. Be USEFUL to the reader,
2. Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
3. Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
4. Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.

These approaches map rather closely to the Four Great Laws of Copywriting, from the American Writers & Artists Golden Thread publication:

1. Reach and influence, at the lowest logical cost, the most people who can and will respond.
2. In this Age of Skepticism, cleverness for the sake of cleverness may well be a liability rather than an asset.
3. E2 = 0 (When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.)
4. Tell the reader/viewer/listener what to do.

In short, your headlines need to tell the reader why they should continue reading, and this can be done with a number of techniques. If you can’t convey interest, you may want to reconsider writing anything at all.

Sources:
http://www.awaionline.com/2008/07/four-great-laws/
http://www.copyblogger.com/writing-headlines-that-get-results/
http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-write-headlines-that-work
http://www.awaionline.com/2001/06/a-review-of-the-4-us/
http://www.copyblogger.com/the-long-and-short-of-copywriting

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I pulled this page up from a website I was working on. I was suprised to see that the Church is advertising with general market banner ads. I wonder which of the two ads on the page is getting a better click-through rate?

The book explores the seemingly small factors that can create epidemics both good and bad. It was interesting to be run through several examples of things that changed because of factors that we would often overlook. I recommend it on audio book, played double speed.

There’s a good synopsis of the book at Notes of Intelligence.

Oddly enough, the sum of tips from the following articles is the answer to life, the universe and everything. How can you not check out these articles from Smashing Magazine about optimizing the design of your website?

1. 8 Tips to Help Your Website Convert
2. 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques
3. 9 Common Usability Mistakes in Web Design
4. 10 Principles of Effective Web Design
5. Five More Principles of Effect Web Design

Thanks to Michael Sanders for the tip. I think I’ll be reading Smashing Magazine more often now.