Micro Content Fixes: How Small Text Changes Can Mean Big Wins

  • New York: Wednesday, February 29

Catherine Toole
Full-Day Training Course

Are the words you put out on the web, mobile, email or social media really working for you?

Is your copywriting making or saving you money? Solving usability problems? Lowering customers’ effort, or increasing their satisfaction?

Have you ever tested how text alone might be used to improve conversion rates? Or lower form drop offs?

Would you like to see how a simple line of copy might encourage customers to self-help instead of running up call centre bills, or persuade them to give you more information about themselves, or to start interacting online with your company or brand?

This tutorial will give you 24 sets of inspirational examples of quick copy fixes you could implement tomorrow, all with a specific commercial advantage behind them.

And when we say ‘implement tomorrow’, remember these are text-only fixes, so they typically don't require any programming changes (with associated debugging delays) or visual design/layout changes. Pure writing and editing: it couldn’t be simpler to make immediate improvements.

What You’ll Learn

  • How to identify low-cost copy-only projects which can show immediate, measurable results
  • Where the quick wins are in your website/s, mobile site and across your social media presence  (hint: often in the most overlooked areas)
  • Tips for troubleshooting usability issues with text
  • How you can use the results from small, strategic content projects to transform the way your organisation plans, creates and maintains content in future

Course Outline

The text-only fixes we’ll share are grouped into 6 themed areas, each with four sets of case studies. There will be opportunity to ask questions and to discuss how these fixes might be applied to your own digital content.

  • First impressions
    • Metadescriptions; Home and landing pages; about us; getting key messages across
    • Cut bounce rates in half with these tweaks alone
  • Perfect form
    • Reassurance text around forms, text supporting conversion/uplift, in-form help, plain language T&Cs
    • What is stopping you getting the conversion rate you desire? See how companies have used text to fix the stumbling blocks that get in the way of form completion/sales.
  • Email uplifts
    • Email sign up, unsubscribe and subject lines (marketing and transactional)
    • Getting customers to sign up and stay signed up – is worth gold tomorrow
  • Where less is more (tiny text)
    • Buttons, mobile sites, tweets, text alerts
    • Small character counts –  but big value to customers if you get it right (and annoying if you don’t)
  • How may I self-serve you today?
    • Customer service copy and messages which encourage self-help online
    • Just think of the money you can save in this area alone
  • ‘Not everything that can be counted, necessarily counts’ (Einstein)
    • 4 killer copy opportunities you may be overlooking
    • (And if you have it all perfect, somebody else in your organisation will thank you for the tips when you get home)

Format

This full-day tutorial includes 24 sets of real-world examples from web, email, mobile and social media to illustrate how tinkering with text alone can have startlingly positive and measurable results. Delivered in a combination of lecture and group discussion.

Course Materials

Copies of the presentation slides.

Who Should Attend

This course is for anyone who is involved in the planning, writing or management of digital content. While the examples given require strong digital copywriting skills to implement, attendees at all skills levels should be able to take ideas and proof points back into their organisations with enough information to brief in and measure similar copy fixes.

Instructor

photo of Catherine Toole Catherine Toole is the founder and CEO of the British digital copywriting agency Sticky Content. A former press journalist, she has spent the past 13 years specializing in Web, email, mobile, and social media content projects for a wide range of clients, agencies, and government departments. In 2010, Sticky Content provided content strategy, web writing training, auditing and copywriting services to clients such as Sony, Nokia, the UK Post Office, Lloyds TSB, Orange Business, Hilton Hotels, Europcar, IKEA, Lufthansa, Shop Direct, John Lewis, British Gas and British Telecom. A well-known speaker in the UK, Catherine has an expert content blog on econsultancy and sits on the executive committee of the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA).