Clear Search Paths for Shoppers

E-tailing expert Peter Laudin, whose enterprises include The Pattycake Doll Company, recently told me an important lesson he learned about making it easier for shoppers to use his company’s website: “Cute does not help the customer! I once had a tab that read ‘From Cinnamon to Chocolate,’ meaning I had a range of brown dolls. I quickly learned to just call it ‘Dolls for Black Children’! Clarity is everything!”
     Peter then gave a personal example from bricks-and-mortar retailing: “Imagine store signage that is so cute the customer scratches their head and wonders if the store even sells what they are looking for. I remember going into a Best Buy and not being able to find what I wanted under any of the signage where I thought it should be. I was in a hurry and floor help were all tied up with other customers. They lost the sale.”
     Classic research by psychologist Edward Wheeler Scripture found that a bit of puzzlement in an advertising headline stimulates interest for reading what follows. In an 1895 book, Dr. Scripture used his studies’ findings to even suggest putting commercial notices upside down in order to attract attention.
     You might have noticed that many of the headlines I use for RIMtailing postings intend to entice through whimsy.
     However, when it comes to serving consumers who are searching, clarity is more important than whimsy. Last year, a front-page article in the Baltimore Sun carried the headline “Opposing votes limn difference in race.” The newspaper’s readers reacted as if they’d like to rip the editors limn from limn. Whoops, I mean limb from limb, which is pronounced the same way.
     “Limn” shares its word root with illuminate and means to give clear, sharp detail. The headline meant that a set of opposing votes portrayed differences between the current electoral candidates in clear, sharp detail.
     But readers were irritated at the Baltimore Sun for creating an unnecessary difficulty. One reader opined, “To put a word like ‘limn’ in the headline for the lead article on the front page of this newspaper seems to me to be unbelievably arrogant and patronizing. Could the headline writer not have fashioned a head around the word ‘illuminate,’ ‘delineate’ or ‘depict’? Perhaps then more readers would not only understand what the article is about but actually might want to read it.”
     Keep search paths clear of limbs shoppers might trip over.

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Stand Out
Limn Words Shoppers Won’t Understand