People Do Judge Authors By Their Covers

Dan Kennedy often says clunky copy out­sells clean copy. I some­what agree with him, but not all the time. In fact, clunk­i­ness can work against you. And a recent uni­ver­sity study proves this.

Peo­ple have a ten­dency to forge not only a last­ing opin­ion based on first impres­sions but also a blan­ket opin­ion that per­vades all other areas as well.

The adage, “a first impres­sion is a last­ing one,” is not only tem­po­ral (i.e., the ini­tial opin­ion remains con­sis­tent and nearly imper­me­able for a long time) but also spa­tial. That is, a first impres­sion is also a uni­ver­sal one. It per­me­ates other areas, even unre­lated ones, as well.

Illog­i­cal? Yes. But it’s human nature.

They uncon­sciously assume there’s a par­al­lel between one part and the whole, in other words. It’s what I call the “uncon­scious par­al­leled assump­tion,” or UPA for short.

I wrote about this exten­sively in the past, where peo­ple make split-​​second judg­ments about your entire busi­ness just based on a frac­tion of what they see, encounter, hear, or per­ceive. Even per­cep­tion alone is enough to thrill or kill an entire business.

Here’s an exam­ple: if you walk in a depart­ment store and see a dusty shelf, you form a neg­a­tive opin­ion about the store. Based on the law of first impres­sions, you will assume the store never cleans its shelves. That opin­ion will stick with you for a very long time.

It will require a lot of work, not to men­tion time, on the part of the store to change that opin­ion — or at the very least, to assuage those neg­a­tive assumptions.

More­over, you will not only think that the store doesn’t take care of its appear­ance, but also believe they equally don’t care about their clients, prod­ucts, staff, promises, etc.

In other words, that sin­gle dusty shelf will prob­a­bly lead you to assume that the store has poor cus­tomer ser­vice, shoddy prod­ucts, and lousy return poli­cies, among others.

Now, I may just be guess­ing here, but I believe that when Dan Kennedy says clunky copy out­sells clean copy, what he’s refer­ring to are fancy designs, daz­zling graph­ics, and styl­ish cos­met­ics that seem to have required an exor­bi­tant invest­ment to create.

I agree with that. Copy will always be the most impor­tant ele­ment of your website.

You want to sell. Not daz­zle or entertain.

But I’ve writ­ten and designed clunky copy for clients who’ve asked for it. That is, incon­sis­tent fonts and type­styles. Vary­ing sizes and col­ors. Very lit­tle to no padding around tables. Erratic design and flow. And poor, cheap to no graph­ics whatsoever.

The thing is, it doesn’t work all the time.

It works pri­mar­ily for those mar­keters who are known, have estab­lished cred­i­bil­ity, and have been referred by other peo­ple. But this doesn’t bode well for new or unknown mar­keters who dupli­cate this seem­ingly lack­adaisi­cal atti­tude toward clean design.

Lately, it seems most online direct mar­keters, par­tic­u­larly new ones, are lazy and tend to use Dan’s rule as an excuse to pay lit­tle atten­tion to the cosmetics.

While I agree the copy is the most impor­tant part of a saleslet­ter or web­site, I equally believe that, in some cases, per­haps in most cases, good design increases response. I’ve tested this exten­sively. As top copy­writer Clay­ton Make­peace said:

“If you’re a busi­ness owner, mar­ket­ing pro or copy­writer, good graphic design is absolutely essen­tial to pro­duc­ing peak response to your sales pro­mo­tions. I’ve seen poor design cut sales by half or even more. Con­versely, I’ve seen stronger graphic design bump response by 20% or even more.”

Per­son­ally, I’ve always been a pro­po­nent of pro­ject­ing a good, clean, pro­fes­sional image, as cred­i­bil­ity is impor­tant to me and my busi­nesses. And I’ve tried or tested clean, sym­met­ri­cal, proper, appeal­ing copy for my own web­sites as much as I can.

Because, in this day and age where scams and snake oils are ram­pant, I pre­fer to stand out, and incul­cate cred­i­bil­ity, trust, and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the minds of my readers.

And design plays a huge part.

For exam­ple, a few years ago I ceased tak­ing on new clients and took a sab­bat­i­cal. I later re-​​opened the doors to accept a few new clients, but in an agency-​​style fashion.

Thing is, most online vet­er­ans know me per­son­ally. But since I’m tak­ing on new clients as an agency and not a free­lancer, and work with asso­ciate and junior copy­writ­ers whom I rep­re­sent, the design is there­fore play­ing a vastly more impor­tant role.

Coin­ci­den­tally, a recent study proves what I’ve been teach­ing for years.

Deal­ing specif­i­cally with web design, the study, revealed in a BBC arti­cle and con­ducted by Car­leton Uni­ver­sity — a uni­ver­sity in my own home town of Ottawa, Canada — revealed how peo­ple make split-​​second deci­sions about web­sites they visit.

I par­tic­u­larly liked this passage:

The researchers also believe that these (quickly formed first impres­sions) last because of what is known to psy­chol­o­gists as the “halo effect”. If peo­ple believe a web­site looks good, then this pos­i­tive qual­ity will spread to other areas, such as the site’s con­tent. Since peo­ple like to be right, they will con­tinue to use the site that made a good first impres­sion, as this will fur­ther con­firm that their ini­tial deci­sion was a good one.

I would add they would also fre­quent other web­sites, and buy other prod­ucts, from the same ven­dor or mar­keter because of that first impres­sion. Does this mean to go spend a huge chunk of change on daz­zling graph­ics, fancy ani­ma­tions, and styl­ish designs?

No. I did say “clean,” not “clever.” Or “pre­ten­tious,” for that matter.

But while copy will always be the most sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment on which you must focus, don’t do so at the expense of other ele­ments that will sti­fle that pow­er­ful first impression.

Why? Because poor design can imme­di­ately deter read­ers, make you look “scammy,” make your offer sus­pect, or stop peo­ple from read­ing your copy in the first place. They will ask, “How can he take care of me when he can’t even take care of himself?”

In fact, accord­ing to the study, a first impres­sion, being a “split-​​second deci­sion,” is not too far from the truth. It really is a split of a sec­ond. The study con­cluded that peo­ple make a deci­sion not in a few sec­onds, as orig­i­nally thought, but in 1/​20th of a sec­ond.

Peo­ple don’t read at first. They skim, scan, and scroll. What they see — what they per­ceive — the moment they hit your web­site is more impor­tant than what they read.

So like it or not, your appear­ance com­mu­ni­cates as much as the words in your copy. It even pre­pares the reader for what they are about to read, and cements what they are will­ing to accept, believe, and trust from what they will read. And it does so very quickly.

As that famous idiom goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But if such a say­ing exists, it’s because we, as human beings, have a nat­ural ten­dency to do so. Like it or not.

What does your “cover” say about you?

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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