Figure Out Who You Are Really Talking To - Page 3

When you ask your boss or client who actually consumes your text, you often get a lot of waving of hands without much detail. Maybe you hear a few numbers that research developed six months ago, some shorthand guidelines issued by a committee reviewing the latest design, and some slogans from the latest marketing campaign. But you rarely hear much about individuals, and because your job is to develop and carry on a conversation with these people, your prose can easily take on the all-purpose smarmy charm of an airline clerk announcing another delay. The more you know individuals in your audience, the better you can write for them.

To find out about real individuals, you may be able to examine a consumer's profile, which may be a dossier that the site should build as the consumer navigates, ponders, buys, sends e-mail, phones in, faxes a question, visits a kiosk, clicks in from a handheld. Ideally, your organization should have a single collection point for all information about each consumer.

In between setting out and coming back, they continually shifted their goals, their preferences, and even their rules without hesitation. Shopping was in many ways a process of discovering or creating underlying preferences rather than acting in accordance with them. — John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information

Unfortunately, many organizations have no idea who consumes their text. Manufacturers of packaged goods, for instance, haven't a clue who most of their customers are because they tend to act as if the big buyers at the department stores and grocery chains are their "real customers." The only real consumers they are aware of are the ones who complained or sued. Companies that sell big- ticket items gather a lot of financial information about each customer, but sometimes that gets spread across several departments, so there is no one file you can open, to review the facts about a particular individual.

If your site has any profiles for consumers, absorb them. But if those profiles are skimpy, or so mired in transactional information that you cannot envision the person behind the sales, you may need to do your own research to find out who is really consuming your text.

First, volunteer:

• Answer the phone in technical and customer support.
• Respond to e-mails sent to technical and customer support.
• Schmooze with consumers at trade shows, conventions, user group meetings.

Then watch:

• Watch through the one-way mirror as the facilitators lead demographically representative consumers through questions created by the marketing group. (See if you can add a few questions of your own).
• Hover around the usability lab. Watch how people get in trouble using your site. (Caution: this experience can be embarrassing if your text happens to be on-screen).

Next, read:

• Competitive analysis to see what the competition is creating for whom, and why.
• Marketing and sales numbers to see what the trends are.
• Marketing materials and plans to see how the organization is positioning itself, and for whom.
• Product documentation to see what tasks the writers imagine people are doing, what concepts need explaining, and what context people are assumed to be using the product in.
• Annual reports—the biggest marketing documents of all—to see how upper management is trying to position the company in front of shareholders and analysts.
• Every news story about your organization, to figure out who the reporter thinks your audience is.

Then schmooze. Talk with anyone who has met, corresponded with, sold to, mollified, or hung up on a consumer, including:

• Sales reps and sales engineers
• Marketing people
• Researchers
• Trainers
• Technical writers
• Phone support and field-support personnel
• Consultants
• People in your partner organizations
• Anyone who hires or manages the actual consumers

Finally, when you have a good mental picture of whoever is visiting the site, go out and meet the consumers, to see what they are really like. Pick a dozen consumers who matter—ones whose good will and loyalty guarantee the site's survival. Not partners. Not influential stakeholders, like investors, ad guys, designers, engineers. Real consumers of your text. Try to get to talk to them at length, in person, so you can watch their reactions. But as Hachos and Rediib say, you must ask a lot of questions.

Information Consumers Are Pushy - Page 2
Hot Text: Web Writing that Works
Figure Out Who You Are Really Talking To (Con't) - Page 4