Evaluating Content: Reading Level

Does your average target user understand the writing found on your Web site? Did you, or your content author, think to evaluate the reading level of your copy prior to publishing? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

If you’re a large organization farming out your Web writing or if you’re a small business with a DIY approach, I’m willing to bet that the author of your content is fairly educated. And while said author(s) can certainly write beyond the average high school student’s reading level it doesn’t mean they should.

One of the biggest problems I discover when I’m tasked with evaluating Web content lies in the reading comprehension level of copy. More often than not, it can be simplified, edited for brevity and structured into smaller paragraphs. Multisyllabic words (how’s that for confusing/technical word choice!) are often presenting reading problems and most of the copy is not optimized for scanning.

Too many sites are just too damn hard to understand for someone trying to find information, make an informed decision or complete a transaction (you know, the things that ultimately lead to that elusive ROI?).

Pharmaceutical manufacturers Web sites are notorious for having readability problems in copy. We’ll use drug maker Glaxo Smith Kline (Advair, Boniva, Paxil, Valtrex, etc.) for our evaluation purposes in discussing the importance of readability.

As you can see by the quick report above, GSK.com has an average reading level of grade 20. So, in theory, to understand the majority of the material on the site, one would have to have significant postgraduate education.

I may be going out on a limb here in assuming that a good chunk of the consumers who use GSK drugs and any potential investors may not have achieved masters or doctoral degrees. So, it should follow that when the less educated are reading through potential side effects of drugs, or are scanning for quick information about the company; this copy isn’t going to make them feel more at ease in using a GSK manufactured medicine or convince them the company is worth their investment dollar.

The problem with GSK mostly lies with a high instance of confusing words and complex sentences. More than 27 percent of the words found on the GSK site are “Complex” (Complex words are polysyllabic – having 3 or more syllables). Even worse are the more than 175 instances of long sentences (10-20 words or more).

How do you improve it? Simplify, my friends. Simplify.

Start aiming for writing copy that younger audiences will understand. I don’t believe that there’s necessarily a magic number, but I generally shoot for 6th to 8th grade. Most journalism schools teach new copywriters to scribe for that comprehension level. It should be no different for most Web sites, unless you have a highly specialized audience (think advanced Web programming, Law Libraries, etc.).

Granted, most drug manufactures create microsites to be more consumer facing and in line with the marketing campaign (Valtrex.com), but even these sites are writing to a high school reading level and using high percentages of confusing words. (Valtrex.com is appropriate for 11th graders FYI)

I’m also of the belief that if corporate sites are in your linking strategy on consumer facing sites (as is the case for GSK.com), you need to have both readable by the same audience, which is clearly not the case here.

Is pharmaceutical stuff sometimes difficult to understand? Absolutely. Do drug names often contain multiple syllables? Absolutely. Does that mean the rest of the content (including descriptions of symptoms the drug treats and potential side effects) needs to be difficult to understand? Absolutely not.

Having trouble getting there, or don’t know how to even get started in evaluating copy readability? It’s not really an exact science (that’s what great editors and content strategists are for), but fortunately, there are lots of nifty tools out there to evaluate this stuff. If you’re looking for a quick evaluation of a page on a site, Read-Able.com is a strong, visually appealing site to generate reports on existing reading levels that will help get your pointed in the right direction.

And, if you’re going to get started in evaluating reading level in web copy, here’s the three things you absolutely need to pay attention to, whether you hire a content strategist or not.

1. Flesch Kincaid reading level. This test is sort of the standard. It’s built into many word processing programs and will give you a general idea of how difficult the content is to digest. If the reading level is too high, cut back on confusing words, simplify sentence structures and utilize elements that make the page easier to scan. Too low? Beef it up a little. Too many syllables in you words? Try breaking them apart or separating thoughts.

2. Make your content brief! More often than not, site owners are trying to reach mass capacity with web content to be better optimized for search. It’s a major disservice to your users and to your governance plan. If you’re using 10 words, do it in five. Don’t use a paragraph when bullets or a diagram can say it better. Utilize checklists, how tos and walkthroughs instead of detailed descriptions or confusing language.

3. Use the common sense test. I know, this is asking a lot, but just like you know pornography when you see it, you’ll know confusing copy when you see it. Don’t be smart for smart’s sake. If you know an eighth grader, ask them if they get the gist of your copy. If they don’t, chances are a good chunk of your visitors don’t get it either.

What tools is your organization using to evaluate reading level? Is it something your strategists are building into their Web toolkits? If not, maybe it’s time you ask them to start doing so, because you may be missing out on conversions or customers.

Image courtesy Brian Talbot

Context As A Content Strategy: Let’s Hash It Out!

For the first time in my professional career, I took a pretty big leap. I told a room full of very, very smart user experience professionals at Internet User Experience 2010 that I believe content strategists are not doing enough to adequately prepare for the next big thing. I also mentioned that I believe that Context, not content, is the real king when it comes to the web.

I’m happy to report that my thoughts and early stab at setting up the foundation for Context Strategy were both well received (see slides below).

Still, I’d like to reiterate that this process still needs refining and that we need to start finding better ways to account for personal behaviors (personal behavioral context) and personal situations (personal situational context) in order to take content strategy to the next level. When we combine personal behavioral and personal situational contexts we have the basis for what we’d potentially need to create a contextual based content strategy.

My next steps are to start exploring fields for content audits and persona development to begin accounting for context, while researching tools (including Eye Tracking, Functional MRI and biometric data) that can be synthesized on a project by project basis. Like I say in my presentation, I really need help formulating this discussion to get to a place where we can all start creating more meaningful content for users on the Web.

Comments on my presentation or the idea of Contextual Content Strategy in general are more than welcome. Let’s hash this thing out people!

On The Importance Of A/B Copy Testing In Content Strategy

I have a love/hate relationship with A/B Split Testing, especially when it comes to Web copy. Love that A/B testing can deliver significantly improved response, but hate that many brands may base all future copy decisions on a single test that delivered or over delivered on expectations.

Relying on a singular result, creates missed opportunity to refocus or edit content for other circumstances, site users, time periods or changing business factors. This is why it is crucial to have a sound content strategy to help determine variables, governance and success metrics for copy based on the user personas that were developed for your Web site.

If we can agree that content is your Web site’s greatest asset, the user persona should be the guidepost you’re using to increase its value any time we change messaging, and we can validate this premise through A/B copy testing.

And only through repeated and frequent testing will we be able to make changes that help us:

What factors should be considered in A/B Split Copy Testing?

1. Start with a metric in mind.
What are you trying to accomplish with the test? Are you after more subscribers, conversion rate increase, or a greater return on investment? Just like wanting to know what we want our users to do helps us define content strategy, goals for testing will determine parameters, which in turn will determine the potential success of our efforts.

2. Establish a control copy page/persona
Think back to your elementary school science class friends. Establishing a control persona will help us to establish the copy that we will test all varitions against, always keeping step one in mind as we develop considerations for variables.

If you are just getting started with A/B testing, your control page will be your current copy that is underperforming before any variation is served. When new copy outperforms the existing control copy, consider it your new benchmark (control persona) in any subsequent testing.

3. Determine a reasonable interval for the test
Determine how you’ll gather the data and for how long you need to gather it. This time period will vary from site to site, but should allow for the gathering sufficient data to gauge real insight about your A/B tests. If your site has a lower number of daily unique visitors, the test may run significantly longer to determine a clear copy winner.

4. Significantly vary your copy
Go big or go home. Slight word changes won’t necessarily give us enough of a true variable. Be radical with copy changes. If we’re spending the time and money to test differences, be sure they’re clear enough to users to determine if the change should really be made. If two to three radical variations can be tested against the control, make it happen!

5. Test, refine and test again
Test the alternate copy against the control (there are lots of different software suites and services that you can use to do A/B testing or you can do it yourself through something as simple as CGI Scripting). Ideally, each copy/persona will be tested against every other variation, but if you don’t have the funds or it becomes impractical to run multiple tests, test two pages at a time and keep the best as your control for subsequent tests as mentioned above.

In a perfect world, our brands, bloggers and friends have the time and the resources to follow a process like this and perform true split testing, but even if we have neither we can still create sequential A/B testing through throwing up one version of our site with one version of copy for a given period and then test alternative versions for the same time period after gathering data. Results may not be as reliable as true A/B split testing, but we can still gather incredibly valuable information from the exercise.

In Conclusion
Copy testing will help us maximize conversion rates, solve site problems, and challenge our assumptions. If you’ve got a fussy client, who continually wants to beat his chest about a product claim, good A/B testing might just show that all the user really cares about is what color it may be or the fact that it fits into their back pocket. And if we can start showing wins on this level, we can open the door for HUGE opportunities when we get beyond testing small changes.

Once initial factors and bugs in content are worked out, we can do bigger things, like designing and writing radically different versions of our pages, for brand new personas, where almost everything is different. And when we can test dramatic changes for new audiences, we’re most likely to achieve breakthrough improvements in conversion rates and potentially that all-important ROI.

Content Rule of Thumb: If You Feel Full Reading, Stop Feeding

There is probably no SEO misconception that I despise more than the “more is better” argument. A good rule of thumb when it comes to content on your web site? If you’re feeling tired (and full) when you’re reading your content, stop feeding it to your visitors.

A very wise woman recently wrote:

“Online, when it comes to informational, marketing, or promotional content, more is almost never more.”

We need look no further than a pair of popular cleaning product makers to see this process in action. When we examine the homepage for Lysol and compare it to Clorox, a few clicks will show just how much more content is jammed into one versus the other.

As you can see below, Lysol’s site is jam packed with Did you Knows, Germ Information, PDFs, menus, sub-menus and enough cookie crumbed pages to choke a small child.

Conversely, the Clorox page features a great deal more whitespace, has fewer downloadables, and no submenus linking into deep pages. It also segments users based on their cleaning locales of interest (someone did their personas!).

So, who has the better SERP ranking? Clorox beats the crap out of Lysol with far less content.

A Google search of the keywords “Cleaning Products” put Clorox.com number one in the sponsored links and the top result of actual products (7th in the organic list). Lysol didn’t appear in the organic search on the first page, nor did it on the next 20. While it appeared in the sponsored links underneath Clorox, I didn’t have the heart to keep digging to see if they made the organic SERPs within 40 clicks.

Not only are the Clorox.com search results better, it’s also far easier to find the information you’re looking for. The fonts are larger, the headlines are shorter, written specifically for a web audience and sub headlines provide an accurate description of what we’ll find within a link or article page. Product information is weaved in nicely with informational articles, there are graphics that engage users while informing and useful tools that help decide the best way to treat stains.

Bottom line, good content helps improve search ranking, but it has to be useful, tagged and relevant.

So before you go off and publish a mammoth Web site with tons of pages, articles and information, with high hopes of a higher SERP ranking, ask yourself a few questions.

• “Does this information add to my brand story, user experience or increase engagement?”
• “Would I lose anything if this content wasn’t here?”
• “Can this information be better organized, bulleted or edited down?”
• “By including this content, am I preventing my users from getting content they need?” (THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE!)

Useful, usable Web sites are not not about providing every single piece of information that anyone could ever think of. It’s about providing solid content that is on strategy, that means something to your visitors and that is properly tagged optimized and placed to be useable for machines and humans. Tag better, write better, and spend more time optimizing and editing less content to get more of a result.

If you get overwhelmed and feeling too full looking at your site, chances are your users feel exactly the same way.

Photo: Sandeep Nair

More Mea Culpa: Facebook’s Terms of Service debacle

Even if you’re the most casual of Facebook users, you’ve no doubt seen one of your friends, a journalist or a “social media expert” (I hate that phrase) sounding off on the social networking giant’s rolling changes to its Terms of Service.

Last night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally yielded to a growing user revolt, just a day after he attempted to clarify changes to the Terms of Service in a blog post. Despite his explanations, users still were unhappy and concerned about their privacy.

With more than 50,000 users complaining. Users win.

Zuckerburg wrote last night that Facebook would revert the terms of service back to its previous version, adding however that the site is determined to update its terms of service, but this time would seek input from the community of Facebook users first.

“If you’d like to get involved in crafting our new terms… you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we’ve created–Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I’m looking forward to reading your input.”

In all honesty, I’m glad Zuckerburg was quick to act and not just because I personally saw some holes in their new terms of service. I’m glad he did it because it’s the right thing to do from a best practice standpoint.

It seems that Facebook and Zuckerberg have learned something from the Beacon problem two years ago.

What Facebook did wrong with it’s roll out of these new terms of use is what some other popular free Web sites have done in recent months – it neglected to adequately warn users of a reasonably major change to the site. The initial blog post that came on February 4 that simply told users that the change happened was not enough to give users ample time to remove content they wouldn’t want to fall under the new terms of use. And all explanations aside, the change was significant.

Hulu faced a similar negative response when it failed to notify its users that it had to remove older seasons of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” in January. Granted, “Sunny’s” parent network, FX made the request that the episodes be pulled and Hulu simply complied. The problem was that they failed to communicate the change to any community members. Seeing as “Sunny” is one of the most popular shows on the site, the community was rightfully upset and in quite an uproar at Hulu’s mismanagement of the situation.

Hulu made it’s Mea Culpa blog post just four days after pulling the episodes. They ended up working out a deal with the network to add the episodes back for an abbreviated period to allow users the chance to get their fix before the episodes made their exit.

What all this comes back to is the need for sites and services to communicate to their users, even if there is nothing terribly important to say. I don’t care if your service is free or paid. iTunes forces me to agree to new terms on a seemingly weekly basis and to be completely honest, I adore them for it. I always know where my privacy stands with them. Facebook should have done the same thing.

Muhammad Saleem pretty much sums up everything I think that Facebook should have done before rolling out changes to their terms of service in a blog post he did following the Hulu incident: “HOW TO: Survive a Social Media Revolt. He nails it on every point. Now, lets see where we go from here.

Photo by Zirak