Not every test needs to be run until a statistical significance of 95% is reached. There, I said it. I am fully aware that this post may be unpopular with many Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) experts out there. But that is ok. From a true statistical standpoint, I recognize that killing a test too early is not the ideal. However, I am approaching this from an operational perspective. There is a cost to every test – in most cases this includes the cost of media. You are spending your marketing dollars to drive traffic to your landing page. Every dollar [...]
The post Conversion Rate Optimization – Know When to Say When! appeared first on Ecommerce Consulting.
A long time ago I was a revolutionary at Apple. My job title was “software evangelist.” My responsibility was to evangelize Macintosh to software developers. Later my title was “chief evangelist,” and my responsibility was to evangelize Macintosh to anyone who wanted to increase productivity and creativity. Post Apple, I’ve been many things: author, speaker, […]
The post The Art of Evangelism appeared first on Guy Kawasaki.
Why customers will expect good behavior to be more than just its own reward.
Read the CURRENCIES OF CHANGE Consumer Trend Briefing from trendwatching.com »
VAGA HandEnergy keeps your device charged using a simple physics principle: kinetic energy
A possible design solution for hardcore gamers who avoid the touchscreen interface
Aunkur Arya, General Manager of Mobile at Braintree, on the security benefits catalyzing mobile commerce growth
Trellie is a notification device that can be configured to flash or vibrate when receiving calls or texts
Information designer responsible for Facebook timeline teaches Skillshare data visualization course
Everyone's favorite value furniture store taps everyone's favorite modern-day hieroglyphics as marketing novelty
Swingmail makes life more orderly by centering email, social media notifications and more within single dashboard
Is Vessel crazy enough to take on YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, and Hulu all at once?
The post Can Vessel Dominate Digital Video With Its Unusual New Revenue Model? appeared first on The Content Strategist.
Over the last few years, search engine optimization has become one of the most misunderstood terms in the world of publishing. Ask marketers about SEO and some will probably tell you it’s a chore, a nuisance meant to promote spam. Others might nod vigorously like the term is important, even if they don’t really know […]
The post SEO Isn’t Dead. It’s Just Different appeared first on The Content Strategist.
For his birthday this year, hip hop mogul Dr. Dre got something unexpected: the cover of AARP magazine. Last week AARP, the 38-million-member nonprofit interest group known for serving a community of 50-and-over consumers, created a mock cover of the music industry heavyweight and tweeted it to its 86,000 followers. The move was part of […]
The post Inside the AARP’s Brilliant Baby Boomer Content Marketing Strategy, Featuring Dr. Dre appeared first on The Content Strategist.
A new study reveals how to improve attention and the ability to focus.
All great designers should also be great storytellers. Find out how to become a better storyteller, and by virtue a better UX designer.
The post You’re not a great designer unless you’re also a great storyteller appeared first on UX for the masses.
Have you ever been caught up in a really good story, but then realize it’s got a lot of plot holes? Or on the flip side, have you ever read, Read More
The post It’s Not Just the Story, It’s the Delivery appeared first on Pybop: Exceptional Content Strategy & Brand Storytelling.
Think about who reads, watches and interacts with all your content. Lots of kinds of people, right? You likely have more than one audience type that you’d like to reach. Read More
The post Achieving Content Strategy Balance appeared first on Pybop: Exceptional Content Strategy & Brand Storytelling.
Groove’s CEO opted to out the company and created a blog that is singularly focused on the transparency of the business itself. Learn how to get started with transparent content for your own brand (and some cussing may be involved). Continue reading →
The post Transparency Reveals Great Content Opportunity appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
The Big Bang theory describes the universe’s origin from a single point billions of years ago. The Big Bang Theory of Content creates from a single point of content an explosion of infinite ways to reuse and repurpose that big idea. Continue reading →
The post Content Strategists Can Follow Their Own Big Bang Theory appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
When a franchise like 50 Shades of Grey enjoys crazy success, is it a signal that content doesn’t have to be good to be crazy-successful? Popularity is only one measure of success, of course. And for most of us in … Read More »
This post is new to AnnHandley.com.
To develop empathy, you need to understand a person’s mind at a deeper level than is usual in your work. Since there are no telepathy servers yet, the only way to explore a person’s mind is to hear about it. Words are required. A person’s inner thoughts must be communicated, either spoken aloud or written down. You can achieve this in a number of formats and scenarios.
Whether it is written or spoken, you are after the inner monologue. A recounting of a few example scenarios or experiences will work fine. You can get right down to the details, not of the events, but of what ran through this person’s mind during the events. In both written and spoken formats, you can ask questions about parts of the story that aren’t clear yet. Certainly, the person might forget some parts of her thinking process from these events, but she will remember the parts that are important to her.
A person’s inner thought process consists of the whys and wherefores, decision-making and indecision, reactions and causation. These are the deeper currents that guide a person’s behavior. The surface level explanations of how things work, and the surface opinions and preferences, are created by the environment in which the person operates—like the waves on the surface of a lake. You’re not after these explanations, nor preferences or opinions. You’re interested in plumbing the depths to understand the currents flowing in her mind.
To develop empathy, you’re also not after how a person would change the tools and services she uses if she had the chance. You’re not looking for feedback about your organization or your work. You’re not letting yourself ponder how something the person said can improve the way you achieve goals—yet. That comes later. For developing empathy, you are only interested in the driving forces of this other human. These driving forces are the evergreen things that have been driving humans for millennia. These underlying forces are what enable you to develop empathy with this person—to be able to think like her and see from her perspective.
This chapter is about learning how to listen intently. While the word “listen” does not strictly apply to the written word, all the advice in this chapter applies to both spoken and written formats.
In everyday interactions with people, typical conversation does not go deep enough for empathy. You generally stay at the level where meanings are inferred and preferences and opinions are taken at face value. In some cultures, opinions aren’t even considered polite. So, in everyday conversation, there’s not a lot to go on to understand another person deeply. To develop empathy, you need additional listening skills. Primarily, you need to be able to keep your attention on what the person is saying and not get distracted by your own thoughts or responses. Additionally, you want to help the speaker feel safe enough to trust you with her inner thoughts and reasoning.
There’s virtually no preparation you can do to understand this person in advance. There are no prewritten questions. You have no idea where a person will lead you in conversation—and this is good. You want to be shown new and interesting perspectives.
You start off the listening session with a statement about an intention or purpose the person has been involved with. In formal listening sessions, you define a scope for the session—something broader than your organization’s offerings, defined by the purpose a person has. For example, if you’re an insurance company, you don’t define the scope to be about life insurance. Instead, you make it about life events, such as a death in the family.1 Your initial statement would be something like, “I’m interested in everything that went through your mind during this recent event.” For listening sessions that are not premeditated, you can ask about something you notice about the person. If it’s a colleague, you can ask about what’s on her mind about a current project.
How often do you give the person you’re listening to your complete attention? According to Kevin Brooks, normally you listen for an opening in the conversation, so you can tell the other person what came up for you, or you listen for points in the other person’s story that you can match, add to, joke about, or trump.2
It feels different to be a true listener. You fall into a different brain state—calmer, because you have no stray thoughts blooming in your head—but intensely alert to what the other person is saying. You lose track of time because you are actively following the point the other person has brought up, trying to comprehend what she means and if it relates to other points she’s brought up. Your brain may jump to conclusions, but you’re continually recognizing when that happens, letting it go, and getting a better grip on what the speaker really intends to communicate. You’re in “flow,” the state of mind described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.3 You are completely engaged in a demanding and satisfying pursuit.
It’s a different frame of mind. You don’t want to be this focused on someone else all the time—you have to do your own thinking and problem-solving most of the time. But when needed, when helpful, you can drop into this focused mindset.
Developing empathy is about understanding another human, not understanding how well something or someone at work supports that person. Set aside this second goal for a bit later. For the time being, shift your approach to include a farther horizon—one that examines the larger purposes a person is attempting to fulfill.
The key is to find out the point of what the person is doing—why, the reason, not the steps of how she does it. Not the tools or service she uses. You’re after the direction she is heading and all her inner reasoning about that direction. You’re after overarching intentions, internal debates, indecision, emotion, trade-offs, etc. You want the deeper level processes going through her mind and heart—the things that all humans think and feel, no matter if they are old or young, or you are conducting the session 500 years ago or 500 years in the future. These are the details that will allow you to develop empathy. Collecting a shallow layer of explanation or preferences does not reveal much about how this person reasons.
To remind the speaker that you’re interested in answers explaining what is going on in her mind and heart, ask questions like:
If you suspect there might be an emotional reaction involved in her story that she hasn’t mentioned yet, ask: “How did you react?” Some people ask, “How did that make you feel,” but this question can introduce some awkwardness because it can sound too much like a therapist. Additionally, some people or industries eschew talking about “feelings.” Choose the word that seems appropriate for your context.
Avoid asking about any solutions. A listening session is not the place for contemplating how to change something. Don’t ask, “Can you think of any suggestions…?” If the speaker brings up your organization’s offering, that’s fine—because it’s her session. It’s her time to speak, not yours. But don’t expand upon this vein. When she is finished, guide her back to describing her thinking during a past occurrence.
It is all too easy to make assumptions about what the speaker means. You have your own life experience and point of view that constantly influence the way you make sense of things. You have to consciously check yourself and be ready to automatically ask the speaker:
Keep in mind that you don’t have the speaker’s context or life experience. You can’t know what something means to her, so ask. It takes practice to recognize when your understanding is based on something personal or on a convention.
Sometimes, you will probe for more detail about the scene, but there’s nothing more to say, really. These kinds of dead-ends will come up, but they’re not a problem. Go ahead and ask this kind of “please explain what you mean” question a lot, because more often than not, this kind of question results in some rich detail.
You don’t need to hurry through a listening session. There’s no time limit. It ends when you think you’ve gotten the deeper reasoning behind each of the things the speaker said. All the things the speaker thinks are important will surface. You don’t need to “move the conversation along.” Instead, your purpose is to dwell on the details. Find out as much as you can about what’s being said. Ignore the impulse to change topics. That’s not your job.
Alternatively, you might suspect the speaker is heading in a certain direction in the conversation, and that direction is something you’re excited about and have been hoping she’d bring up. If you keep your mind open, if you ask her to explain herself, you might be surprised that she says something different than what you expected.
It’s often hard to concede you don’t understand something basic. You’ve spent your life proving yourself to your teachers, parents, coworkers, friends, and bosses. You might also be used to an interviewer portraying the role of an expert with brilliant questions. An empathy listening session is completely different. You don’t want to overshadow the speaker at all. You want to do the opposite: demonstrate to her that you don’t know anything about her thinking. It’s her mind, and you’re the tourist.
Sometimes it’s not a matter of assumptions, but that the speaker has said something truly mystifying. Don’t skip over it. Reflect the mystifying phrase back to the speaker. Ask until it becomes clearer. Don’t stop at your assumption. Teach yourself to recognize when you’ve imagined what the speaker meant. Train a reflexive response in yourself to dig deeper. You can’t really stop yourself from having assumptions, but you can identify them and then remember to explore further.
Another way to explain this is that you don’t want to read between the lines. Your keen sense of intuition about what the speaker is saying will tempt you to leave certain things unexplored. Resist doing that. Instead, practice recognizing when the speaker has alluded to something with a common, casual phrase, such as “I knew he meant business” or “I looked them up.” You have a notion what these common phrases mean, but that’s just where you will run into trouble.
If you don’t ask about the phrases, you will miss the actual thinking that was going through that person’s mind when it occurred. Your preconceived notions are good road signs indicating that you should dwell on the phrase a little longer, to let the speaker explain her thought process behind it.
Most web content projects have both structural and editorial aspects: for example, the information needs to be structured to support the new responsive design, and the current copy needs an update so it adheres to messaging and brand guidelines.
I’m often asked which is the best order to approach the work: structure first and then rewrites, or the reverse? I didn’t used to have a strong opinion, because it seemed to me like a chicken-and-egg problem. If the project starts with structure, I’m building content models off of bad information. If, instead, we start with rewrites, the writers don’t know what pieces we need to fill the models, because the models don’t exist yet. It felt like both directions were equally fraught, and I didn’t have any strong reasons to recommend one over the other.
(Note that I’m not talking about starting without the editorial foundations of a project: understanding the business goals, establishing a message architecture, and knowing what the work is supposed to accomplish are core pieces of any project. I’m talking instead about rewriting poor content—editing and creating new copy based on those foundations.)
I recently finished up the second phase of a project that we organized to focus on structure first, and reasons to stick with this approach piled up in my lap like turkeys going to roost. I think that a structure-first approach does make sense for the majority of my projects, and here’s why.
On this particular project, the existing copy was horrible. Jargony, clichéd, and almost stubbornly unhelpful. How could I build a useful content model off of bad content?
As I was working, I realized that the quality of the copy–even if it’s terrible–doesn’t really affect the models. I don’t build models off of the exact words in the content, but instead I build off of what purpose that copy serves. I don’t actually care if the restaurant description reads like teen poetry (sorry teens, sorry poets): it’s the restaurant description, and we need a short, teaser version and a long, full version. The banquet facilities should include well-lit photos taken within the last decade, and the captions should use the appropriate brand voice to describe how the rooms can be used. I don’t actually need to see decent photos or strong captions to build space for them into the models.
A complex content model will help inform all kinds of site decisions, from CMS choice to data formatting. Developers can make better architecture decisions when they have a sense of what kinds of relationships exist between content types, and designers can organize a pattern library that matches the granularity of the content model. The earlier the structure work is done, the easier it is to build integrated design and development plans.
When projects are focused on the structural aspects of the work—we want to recombine content for different channels, or make a clever responsive experience using structured fields—people often start out convinced that the current content is decent enough to do the job. “Sure, it could probably use some spiffing up, but that’s just not in the cards right now.”
I have never seen a more effective argument for the importance of editorial work than taking existing copy and seeing how inadequately it fills a model that we’ve already agreed meets our business goals.
A model I built recently had a content type for holding gushy snippets about the business’s amazing customer service. When we went to move the existing content into the new models, the only copy we could find to migrate amounted to “free ice water” and “polite employees.” We had already agreed that telling the story of the brand experience was a key job of the new website, and seeing how thoroughly their current content failed to do that was the kick in the pants they needed to find budget for an editorial assist.
Waterfall isn’t a great match for content development any more than it is for design and code, so editorial rewrites often trigger adjustments to the content models. I may split one large field into two smaller ones, or the writers will find a place where I left out an important piece of content altogether. Refining the models is an expected part of the process.
On projects where editorial rewriting has been done first, though, I often end up with copy that, although now written beautifully, has no place in the model. In the course of structuring the information, we combined two pages into one, or are reusing the same description in three places, and so the editorial effort that went into fixing that copy is thrown out before it ever sees the light of day. That’s discouraging, and can lead to content creators feeling like I don’t value their time or their work.
It’s nice to have some strong reasoning behind my structure-first leaning, but of course my experiences may not translate to your project needs at all.
If you’ve worked on a project that organized structure work first, what advantages or drawbacks did that process uncover? From a design and development perspective, are there pros or cons to either direction that aren’t covered here?
If you’re a writer, does creating copy within a content model free or stifle your best work? If you prefer to start with editorial rewrites, what are the hidden benefits for the structural side of the project?
I believe there are real benefits to taking a structure-first approach to organizing content activities, and I’d love to hear how and if that works for your projects as well.
Organized people aren't born; they're built. Here are the habits that you can cultivate to be just like them.
We all know that one friend or coworker who is super-organized. The person who is punctual, finishes projects with time to spare, and always knows exactly where to find what they need when they need it.
The rules proposed by FCC Chair Tom Wheeler could put internet service providers in a tough legal bind.
This has been a big week for the future of the Internet.
Team, a beautiful new time- and project-management tool, aims to help small creative studios get competitive with real-time analytics.
Designers, writers, photographers, and other creatives famously hate having to spend time on the administrative, business-y side of their work. Keeping track of finances, managing staff, and filling in time sheets are all maddening distractions from the work that actually matters.
Management thinks everyone has work-life balance, but employees want more flexibility. What's behind the disparity and how can we fix it?
"There's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life and there's no balance."
