I’m a fan of less is more, to the same extent one of my favourite sayings is by Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”.
There are too many occasions when we arrive on websites to be confronted by bewildering amounts of copy. When this happens sure as eggs are eggs we’re thinking, “do I really need to read this or is it ok for me to shut it down and do something else”.
It’s on this principle that we are attempting to cut down the copy for the new website. We certainly don’t want potential customers arriving at our site and running a mile because we didn’t spend the time to create copy that was informative, easy to read but most importantly, concise.
Our web based text messaging service is called Textburst and the old description is as follows:
“Textburst: Our product Textburst is a web based SMS service that enables you to fully manage your SMS needs quickly and easily via an internet browser”.
I hope after that mouthful you are still reading?
Complete drivel, it repeats Textburst twice in the first 4 words, instructs you that it’s a web based service that can be accessed from, guess what, a web browser! It also hints that that managing your SMS needs is insufficient and FULLY managing your SMS needs is more appropriate”.
So the process starts by deleting unnecessary words which leaves us with something like:
“Textburst: Web based SMS service”.
Strangely, although it’s a very accurate description it falls short on actually selling the product and it’s features. I also think there will be some potential customers to whom “Web based SMS” doesn’t mean anything, so now we need to add a few words, be more descriptive, more friendly.
This is our current draft:
“Web based application to send and receive SMS. Upload Contacts, personalise, send.”
The first 8 words accurately describe the product to a wide audience. The last 4 are an attempt to put more context into the application and what you can use it for, they’re also chronological in terms of how you would use the application. Upload your contacts, personalise your message, and send.
So there we have it, it may change before we release in January, and indeed post release when we have some user feedback, but I think we’ve come up with something short, punchy, descriptive, readable, and entirely free of drivel.