Watch Those Speed Bumps

A forum post on my copy­writ­ers board sug­gested that too many ital­ics, bolds, under­lines, yel­low high­light­ing and the like are not good. One referred to them as “speed bumps,” which reduce usabil­ity and readability.

I don’t nec­es­sar­ily agree with this premise.

First, under­stand that for­mat­ting tricks help to drive impor­tant points home, or empha­size key points in the copy you want your reader to read, focus on and remember.

When in a face-​​to-​​face encounter, a sale is not only made on what you say but how you say it. Includ­ing inflec­tion of your voice, rhythm, tone, vol­ume, paus­ing, non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and others.

Because “how” you say it can empha­size, sup­port or con­tra­dict your message.

Lower your voice dur­ing an impor­tant point in your sales pitch causes peo­ple to lean for­ward to make sure they hear every­thing. Inflect cer­tain key words or phrases can help drive impor­tant ideas home. And so on.

Now, on the web, there’s no face-​​to-​​face inter­ac­tion. You don’t have the same lux­ury. And there­fore, for­mat­ting can be used as an effec­tive tool to under­line (and I mean that lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively) impor­tant points.

Granted, I agree that “speed bumps” do reduce ease of read­ing. But you don’t want to make it too com­fort­able for the reader. Espe­cially with web copy.

What I am say­ing is that speed bumps, used spar­ingly and judi­ciously, are good.

Why? Because copy is dif­fer­ent than, say, an arti­cle, edi­to­r­ial or enter­tain­ing piece of text. If you make it too easy for them, they will doze off, lose track, com­pre­hend less or leave.

Here’s a lit­tle story.

Brian Keith Voiles and I once offered con­tra­dic­tory advice. When I told my clients and stu­dents to use red head­lines, par­tic­u­larly when sta­tis­ti­cal split-​​tests showed red increased response, Brian said, “Never use red in your head­line… It means STOP!”

First, Brian is right. How­ever, Brian is pri­mar­ily an offline copy­writer. But online, that’s exactly what you want peo­ple to do. That is, you want them to stop (stop scan­ning, that is).

Remem­ber the 3 immutable laws of human behav­ior, espe­cially on the web:

1. Peo­ple never read
2. Peo­ple never believe
3. Peo­ple never do

So you need to apply the “3 P’s” (or have it in the back of your mind when you write online copy). They are:

1. Pull them in
2. Prove your case
3. Push them to act

Peo­ple online never read any­thing at first. They skim, scan and scroll. You want them to stop scan­ning and start reading.

“Speed bumps,” if you will, cause lit­tle dis­trac­tions along the way that 1) prod the reader con­stantly to keep read­ing, and 2) avoid them from read­ing text that, if it’s all the same, starts to appear as one big blur and puts them to sleep — or into a trance-​​like state.

They get bored, tired and lose focus. Best case, and since their time is short, they get tempted to scroll again to save time.

Mind you, great copy should do a good job to keep the reader inter­ested. The con­tent alone should be pow­er­ful enough to keep them inter­ested and hang­ing onto every word.

But…

For­mat­less copy is like turn­ing a face-​​to-​​face sales pre­sen­ta­tion that’s meant to per­suade into a bor­ing, monot­one and limp lec­ture that only edu­cates, informs or enter­tains at best.

(How many pieces of copy caused you to start read­ing, and then after 1–2 pages — or even 1–2 para­graphs if not sen­tences — made you stop and start scrolling up and down again?)

Dan Kennedy teaches a lot about “copy cos­met­ics,” because the for­mat­ting of your saleslet­ter is just as impor­tant as the words.

That said, there are a few caveats:

1) Ulti­mately, copy is not meant to educate.

It’s meant to edu­cate, yes. But first, it’s meant to attract atten­tion, then edu­cate, and then per­suade. In that order.

Remem­ber the AIDA for­mula? It means “Atten­tion,” “Inter­est,” “Desire” and “Action.” Your first job, above all else, is to cap­ture people’s atten­tion, and then it’s to cap­ti­vate them… and to keep them captivated.

Large head­lines in a color other than black (e.g., red, bur­gundy, blue, etc), for exam­ple, are proven “scan-​​stoppers.” They draw atten­tion to them­selves, which is what you want.

This doesn’t apply to head­lines exclu­sively. Head­ers (sub­heads through­out the copy), empha­sis on cer­tain words within the copy, John­son boxes with bor­ders, and so on all help to draw atten­tion to those elements.

So they are indeed “speed bumps.” But on the infor­ma­tion super­high­way, where peo­ple browse at the speed of elec­trons, peo­ple are “speed­ing by” and will often scroll your copy up and down, quickly try­ing to find some­thing that inter­ests them — or a rea­son to jus­tify read­ing the copy in the first place.

That’s why most peo­ple try to look for the price. The prob­lem is, they are not look­ing for the price to jus­tify their buy­ing deci­sion, but to jus­tify the need to read your long copy in the first place.

And with­out read­ing the copy first to under­stand and appre­ci­ate the full value of your offer­ing, prices alone will often push them away.

2) Sci­en­tific split-​​tests have proven it.

For exam­ple, “clunk­i­ness” does out­per­form clean copy. I know this inti­mately! One piece of copy I wrote bombed. It’s was beau­ti­ful — both the mes­sage as well as the look. We tested the same copy after adding a few strate­gic bolds, ital­ics and underlines.

Guess what? Response shot up dramatically.

Am I say­ing use bolds and under­lines and yel­low high­light­ing willy-​​nilly? No! For one, it loses cred­i­bil­ity — work­ing against rule #2 above. But more impor­tantly, too many “speed bumps” are bad because now they bleed into one another. They trans­form the text into one big blur… again.

But the mod­est use of cos­metic enhance­ments is best, as they draw atten­tion to them­selves with­out “blend­ing in” too much with the rest of the copy

Look at it this way.

Too much makes all the copy look the same. Overuse of bolds, ital­ics and so on can thus become counterproductive.

For instance, if peo­ple start scrolling up and down with mas­sive amounts of yel­low high­light­ing, noth­ing stands out and grabs them by the eye­balls, stops them from scan­ning and forces them to start reading.

Plus, if you’re using for­mat­ting to empha­size cer­tain words or phrases, then too much makes all the text look the same and, as a result, “de-​​emphasizing” other, more impor­tant words you wanted to stand out in the first place.

3) Peo­ple will com­plain, regardless.

Peo­ple who think they “are the mar­ket,” espe­cially busi­ness own­ers who think they are their own mar­kets, will make assump­tions. Often, the wrongs ones. And busi­ness own­ers often tend to jump at the slight­est com­plaint and make assump­tions them­selves based on that com­plaint, sug­ges­tion or comment.

But what peo­ple say and what peo­ple do are totally different.

(Espe­cially “who” says and does it, too.)

A few rules by mil­lion­aire copy­writer Dan Kennedy…

1. Long copy out­pulls short copy.
2. Clunky-​​looking copy out­pulls clean copy.
3. Per­sonal copy out­pulls imper­sonal copy.
4. Hard-​​hitting copy out­pulls soft copy.
5. Sequen­tial copy out­pulls one-​​hit copy.

(By the way, “sequen­tial” means fol­low­ing up with your prospects, such as autore­spon­ders, or offline, doing a 2nd, 3rd or more mail­ing to the same mar­ket with your copy.)

By the way, here’s an actual story to show you an exam­ple of point #2.

Perry Mar­shall, a famous Google AdWords guru (and also a great copy­writer him­self), once told me this lit­tle story (not his own, but a great story he read about that illus­trates a really good point nonetheless).

A retailer was going out of business.

Frus­trated, the owner took a piece of dog-​​eared, coffee-​​stained card­board with large chunks ripped from its sides, and with a huge, black Sharpie marker, wrote in big, bold letters:

“BUSINESS SUCKS SALE!”

He put it in his store­front win­dow. The result? His busi­ness exploded! It became so busy, peo­ple were lin­ing up at the cash counter. (Busi­ness cer­tainly didn’t suck anymore.)

So the busi­ness owner said to him­self, “Wow, that sign really works! I’m going to have one pro­fes­sion­ally made at the local printer. That should jump busi­ness even more!”

The result?

Busi­ness went back down.

Way down.

So he had a hunch. He decided to put the hand-​​made card­board ver­sion back out. And what hap­pened? You guessed it: busi­ness went back up again. Go fig­ure. Or not.

4) Too much of a good thing can kill you.

Another side to the issue is not just the usabil­ity but also the cred­i­bil­ity. Too many “speed bumps” can make it hard to read, which again defeats the pur­pose. But more impor­tantly, they cause peo­ple to judge your entire busi­ness based on the image you project.

If you become too “clunky,” then peo­ple will assume that your busi­ness, your busi­ness prac­tices, your prod­ucts and espe­cially your treat­ment of cus­tomers are just as “clunky.”

I wrote about this in my blog a few months ago. In it, I talk about the fact that first impres­sions do matter.

But you can still use cos­met­ics and for­mat­ting to empha­size cer­tain words or phrases you wish to drive home but with­out your copy appear­ing as if it was cre­ated by some preschooler.

(Mind you, Bill Glazer, Dan Kennedy’s part­ner, once did a mail­ing cam­paign using a Crayola-​​drawn let­ter­ing and stick fig­ures, replete with the inverted “E’s” and “R’s,” as one would expect from a preschooler. It was a highly suc­cess­ful campaign!)

I believe there’s a happy medium.

Remem­ber that you do want to cre­ate a good first impres­sion, as first impres­sions are not only last­ing ones but also con­ducive to sales. Includ­ing repeat and refer­ral sales.

The sec­ond step in my 3-​​step for­mula ear­lier is to “prove your case.” That means cre­den­tial­iz­ing your copy, adding proof and pro­ject­ing a sound, pro­fes­sional, trust­wor­thy image.

And the cos­met­ics do com­mu­ni­cate this, with or with­out you know­ing it.

In the end, it goes both ways: don’t be overly fancy or “clean” look­ing, as well as don’t be overly shoddy or “clunky” look­ing, since either one will kill your sales or your cred­i­bil­ity. Or both.

In other words, don’t focus too much on cos­met­ics, either way, at the expense of the most impor­tant part of your copy…

The words.

About the Author

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