Writing for the web

You already know that social proof (a la testimonials, statistics/data, user reviews) speaks a million times —- yes, a million times —- louder than most of the marketing copy you could write and put online.

So why aren’t your testimonials helping to build trust and convert? I mean, dammit, you spent all this time tracking down happy customers, getting their testimonials, getting them to sign off on them and putting everything through legal —- and now that it’s on your site, it just doesn’t feel right. What went wrong?

Any short story writer could tell you simply: You’re a bad dialogue writer. But there’s hope!

Here’s the skinny on writing dialogue
First of all, copywriters and content strategists need to start embracing some techniques taught in any intro writing class. Specifically: learn to write dialogue. We’re all so busy signing up for these ridiculous “22 Tips to Making 1 Mil This Year by Writing a Soulless, Screaming DM” that we are somehow overlooking the real writers who actually do and should have a place on our shelves: Swift, Johnson, Woolf, Hemingway, Joyce, Barthelme, Faulkner.

Speaking of Faulkner, take a look at this excerpt from “A Rose for Emily”:

After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man–a young man then–going in and out with a market basket.

“Just as if a man–any man–could keep a kitchen properly,” the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.

“But what will you have me do about it, madam?” he said.

Mmmm……. Faulkner…….. Now tell me you can’t learn anything from that. Here’s just a few of the ways he gets dialogue bloody right:

• Uses indirect quotes: A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor
• Makes the language sound real, not forced
• Quotes people when it’s necessary and uses narrative where no quote is needed
• Keeps quotes in context —- no strange quotes appear out of the blue (read a poststructuralist for some of that!)
• Gives a speaker to each quote —- no one’s anonymous

Now let’s translate that to the Web.

A place for dialogue on your Web site
Testimonials are dialogue. They’re the quote of a character (your customer) in the story you’re telling. So do like Faulkner:

Sound real and give context
Here’s a testimonial from the “testimonials page” for some sort of conference on an Adobe product:

“As the leading provider of content creation tools to help people communicate better, adding intelligence to media via metadata was integral to our strategy. We developed Adobe XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) based on RDF, because it provided a flexible and interoperable framework for fostering the capture, preservation, and interchange of metadata across digital media and workflows.”
- David Burkett, Director of Product Management, Adobe Systems

Compare that testimonial to the short and natural one in this QuickBooks.ca screenshot:

That’s what QuickBooks does here. We get a header that sets expectations for the testimonial… not to mention narrative context. I know that the story here is all about saving time for businesses. The narrative states that and the quote/dialogue supports it.

No anonymity
Blech. There’s nothing worse than a so-called testimonial with no person’s name attached to it. Says to users two things:

1. People don’t want their name associated with your product, so they must not like it that much
2. You made that whole testimonial up (for marketing purposes)

Stop lying to yourself: no one wants to read a testimonial from nobody. Don’t even bother writing it if no one is going to take credit for having said it.
Other points about writing dialogue well

• People only use exclamation points (!) in dialogue when there’s actually something to exclaim: “Fire!”, “Stop it!”, “Don’t touch that lamp!” So your product is actually not “The #1 best-selling toaster pastry brand in North America!”
• You should use quotation marks for a visual cue: ” ” = person talking
• Punctuate like a pro:
  • Sally Jones wrote, “The only way I made it through this tax season is with QuickTax online editions. Thanks!”
  • “The only way I made it through this tax season,” wrote Sally Jones, “is with QuickTax online editions. Thanks!”
  • “The only way I made it through this tax season is with QuickTax online editions. Thanks,” wrote Sally Jones.
  • “The only way I made it through this tax season is with QuickTax online editions. Thanks!”
    Sally Jones, 2008, via email
• Keep ‘em short to keep ‘em believable and easy to grasp
• No floaters! Only use quotes when they’re necessary, and make sure they’re directly related to the topic
• Don’t repeat the same testimonial across your site as that looks just plain sad
• You don’t always need to write it, especially with online video: WaterLessGrass
• Read, read, read about how to get these important social proof points right (start with GrokDotCom’s piece on Why Testimonials Do and Don’t Work)