SKY IS THE LIMIT...

Study group is a leading in the international education industry. It specializes in providing a wide range of educational opportunities to individuals who want to study in english speaking countries.

Almost all of Study Group's revenues are agent mediated. In this sense, the website is used primarily to help students to find the right agent rather than to generate direct sales.

"In 1999, we had a corporate site with no clear objectives for either" "The contact details were basic, and there was no monitoring of traffic or contact." between 1999 and 2003, the number of study group websites and webpages grew substantially. However, the content remained brochureware.

Towards the end of 2003, Study Group was facing a number of challenges with its websites:
- No growth in trafic since 2002
- No growth in enquiries since 2002
- Broadly flat traffic and visitor behavior metrics
- Gradual decline in google ranking for key search terms
- Increasing competition from other websites in the sector

THE ACTIONS

Study Group used the killer Web content approach to develop a new Web strategy. This strategy needed to achieve the following key objectives.

- Increase the number of potential students visiting its websites.
- Increase the number of potentials students returning to the website, as research indicated that the decision to take a Study Group course was made over a period of time.
- Increase the page views per visitor so that visitors would be better informed when they made an inquiry.
- Increase the quality of students'enquiries.
- Ensure that the cost of the excercice was proportionnal to the additionnal revenue generated by the websites.
- Ensure that the websites delivered a quantifiable increase in sales.

The key action points that the killer web content approach proposed were as follows.

- Better define the target readers for each website
- Focus on the killer content for the target readers and get rid of the killer content. (Write Web content, not print content)
- Focus on the core tasks that readers that readers came to the website to complete and the carewords that they pursued these tasks with.
- Improve the publishing processes. Start commissioning and scheduling content. Put proper editing and review processes in place. Motivate and reward the editors and writers.
- Create content that will improve the chances of being found in the first page of major search engines' results.
- have an ongoing strategy to acquire new links from third parties.


REQUIREMENT------------------------------------ACTION

Define target reader
- Carried out market analysis
- Consulted with market specialists
- asked readers (students) what they wanted
- Examined successful competitor websites

Define killer content
- Distinguished clearly between the killer and the filler
- STRUCTURED PUBLICATION PLAN AROUND WHAT STUDENTS WANT TO SEE AND NEED TO SEE, RATHER THAN WHAT STUDY GROUP WANT TO GIVE THEM

Focus on tasks and carewords
- found that what students care about most is hearing the stories of other students
- Wrote for the students, rather than at them, and where possible got students to write content that recounted their experiences of studying with Study Group
- Overhauld classification entirely to create a smaller set of classifications that were careword focused

Improve publishing processes
- Appointed a full time web editor and writers who had web writting as part of their job profile (this adressed motivation and reward.)
- Turned web publishing into a more rigorous discipline with deadlines and a defined editing process
- Separated the print publishing process from the web publishing process
- Rewrote all web content, based on web writting rules as articulated by the killer web content approach
- gave web writting seminars to all those involved

Get found in search
- Activated strategy to research and go after appropriate third party links
- Wrote page titles and other relevant metadata from the point of view of how students searched
- Made sure that navigation ans all other links were coherent and consistent throughout the websites

To create such killer web content on a consistent basis, Study group has started a student club initiative. According to Richard Giner, "This will offer a rich online experience tailored to the needs of individuals wishing to study abroad, and publishing students' own perspectives on the study abroad experience, via forums, community-style Web environments, testimonials, quizzes, questionnaires, competitions, and 'rate the school'-type pages. 

THE RESULTS

Here are some of the measurable outcomes:

Embassy CES
1. Unique visitors up 68%
2. Visits up 172%
3. Pages views up 83%
4. Returning visitors up 127%
5. Unique enquirers up 47%
6. Sales up 37%

Bellerbys college
1. Unique visitors up 84%
2. Visits up 208%
3. Pages views up 129%
4. Returning visitors up 194%
5. Unique enquirers (remarkably) down 10%
6. But Sales up 142%

The ranking of important Study group carewords in major search engines has also improved substancially. "For key phrases such as 'english schools in London' or 'english courses in Oxford' in the market langages that matter, such as Italian, Spanish, or Japanese, we have gone from being over 100 in the rank (ten pages in) to being in the top ten (i.e in the first page), and, in many cases, first' Richard Giner states.

"I think these figures speak for themselves," mr Giner continues. "We have carried out almost no promotion, but have rather focused almost entirely on Gerry's advice. We can safely attribute these significant improvements in our key metrics and the sales growth to the Mc Govern approach to web content publication."

If you have a flair for content, this is your time. The world's economy might run on oil, but also runs on content.

Developping the skills of a web editor gives you a really bright future. Like all editors, you will focus first and foremost on knowing your reader. You will learn to understand what your reader really cares about - the killer content.

Some of the most productive and talented writers have followed a regular writting schedule and have even established rituals. (Ernest Hemingway supposedly sharpened 20 pencils before writting, and Somerset Maugham wrote until precisely 12.45PM everyday) Find the schedule that works best for you and then stick to it. Good writing is achieved as a result of a long term process not a once-off project.

"We all have heard that the average online conversion tops out at about 2%" Bryan Eisenberg, founder of Future Now writes. "What you probably don't know is that the average offline catalogue retailer that moves online has an average conversion rate of 6%. That's 3 times better than average! Why? Their words."

Words are your secret weapon

Words are incredibly powerful. Because there are so many of them around, because we read so many of them everyday, we sometimes forget their power, their influence. If words have an extraordinary power in ordinary life, they have an even more extraordinary power on the Web.

There is nothing with greater potential to maximize the value from your website than the right words. There is nothing with greater potential to destroy value on your website than the wrong words. The right words will drive your customers to action. The wrong words will drive them to distraction.

Consider the following:

• Microsoft changed one word in a particular heading and saw a 300 percent increase in the number of people who clicked on the heading.
• Based on our advice, a client changed three words on a particular webpage and saw a 30 percent increase in sales inquiries.
• Another client repositioned a link on its webpage and saw $70,000 in sales from this link over a two-month period.
• A business-to-business client changed the call-to-action language on its products pages. Qualified leads rose from 100 per month to over 200 per month. Nothing else was changed.
• One summary from a list of 17 was chosen by 1,000 people out of a sample of 2,000 participants, from 14 different countries. In other words, 50 percent of people selected the same summary from a choice of 17!
• Changing the text in a button from "Click to qualify - it's free" to "Am I eligible? Find Out Instantly" resulted a 40 percent increase in people clicking on the button.
• In an extensive analysis of tourism-related words carried out in 12 countries over a two-year period, we found an incredible commonality between the top ten words people chose. In fact, the top two words/phrases (Accommodation, Special Offers) were either first or second from Singapore to Sweden, from Seattle to Switzerland.
• We tested a series of words with the web staff of a particular organization, asking them to choose based on the relevance to their customers. Then we tested the same set with a sample of customers. There was no correlation. The words that the staff thought were important to the customers were not the words that the customers chose.
• "In the United States, over 80 times more people search for "cheap flights" than for "low fares." In the United Kingdom, 6,500 times more people search for "cheap flights" than for "low fares". No, that's not a typo. It is 6,500 times more! "Low fares" is what the airline industry likes to say. "Cheap flights" is customer language. This an extremely common mistake organizations make on the Web: assuming that their words are their customers words. Never, ever assume that.

Everywhere on the Web, words are making a difference. 

We've spent more than ten years taking a rigorous approach to finding out what content works, and what content doesn't. The result is Customer Carewords, a rapid-fire analytical tool that captures the words that people really care about. These words give you a toolbox from which you can build a website that delivers maximum value both to you and your customer.

Offline catalogue retailers know the value of content. They know that words can make the sale, deliver the service and build the brand. For most organizations, web content is still a hidden asset, and they are accidental publishers. Focus on your readers, their tasks and their carewords, and you will tap this asset and reap rich rewards.

By Gerry McGovern

When you discover the carewords of your customers, you discover what makes them click.

Exemple:

Ryanair: The Low Fares Airlines                                           PREVIOUS
Ryanair: Fly Cheaper                                                               NOW

Aer Lingus: Low fares. Way better                                     PREVIOUS
Aer Lingus: For the cheapestAer Lingus Fares                NOW

Both of these airlines have moved away from using "low fares" to using the "cheap"word. That is very hard thing to do, as conventional wisdom would say that it's not very good branding to be seen as cheap. Well, it certainly hasn't harmed the Ryanair and Aer Lingus Brands. And as for the airline I mentionned that refused to use the word "cheap" on its website, last I heard it was being liquidated. (But the brand retained its dignity, of course.)

PEOPLE SHARE COMMON CAREWORDS

When faced with a particular task, people all over the world use the same basic carewords. It is quite simply a mith that, if you put 20 people in a room and ask them to choose a set of 20 acrewords, you'll get 20 totally different sets of answers. Certainly, there may be subtle yet important differences in certain carewords choices, but there will be strong core commonalities. i put over 1000 people in rooms in 11 different countries to find the carewords of tourists in order to help an imaginary company achieve success. The consistency of choices from these 1000 people was amazing I asked them to choose their favourite ten carewords from a set of 136 carewords options. Over 45% chose the same top ten carewords. The bottom 70 potential carewords were chosen by less than 3% of the people.

The top 15 carewords chosen were:
1 Accomodation
2 Special offers
3 Planning a trip
4 About Ireland
5 Getting here and around
6 Things to do and see
7 Deals
8 What to see and do
9 Book travel
10 Home
11 irish vacation packages
12 Best of ireland
13 Contact Us
14 travel bookings
15 About U

THE MCGOVERN CAREWORD FINDER

It helps you to quickly identify your customers' carewords. It' s a simple three step process:

1 Prepare a list of potential carewords
2 Get people to choose their favorite carewords from the list.
3 Analyse the results.

Unfortunately, too many websites that I have dealt with do not understand the essence of what they do. Don't make that mistake. Understanding what your website is about and perfecting those core tasks is how you deliver maximum value.

Words drive actions on the Web.

There might be many thousand words published on your website but there are only a very small number that really matter ti your customers.

Carewords are the core patterns of content. There is a best way to write headings, summaries, and paragraphs, and in each case identifying the carewords of the customer you are writting for is the first essential step.

You absolutely must be fast. You don't pay to wait in Mc Donald's. And you don't pay to wait on the Web - That's why people hate those Flash intro Webpages; That's why they always click "Scrip Intro."

That's why people love Google. look at the simplicity of the google home page, the entire weight (image and HTML) of which is less than 15 KB. Google is the ferrari of the Web. it downloads and drives like a racing car because it knows that nobody whants to spend a second longer searching than they absolutely have to.

I remember seeing the report on a test of a couple of hundred people whose online shopping habits were being analyzed over a two month period. Before the test, they were given a questionnaire, and one of the questions related to how often they checked the privacy policy on a website they were buying something from. About 40% said that they would regularly check the privacy policy. However, after the months period, the data was analyzed and it was found that less than 5% regularly checked the privacy policy. So, what people tell you they do on your website may not be what they actually do.

Let's say you are thinking of flying somewhere. What might be your carewords? Low fare? Cheap flight? Research indicates that 400 times more people search using the words "cheap flights" than "low fares". So, if you are selling economy fares, it is imporatant that you use the term "cheap flights" in your marketing and advertising campaign. I remember telling this to a senior executive from a major airline. He shrugged, replying that there was no way his airline would use the words "cheap flights" on its website. "It would hurt the brand," he told me. (very sensitive things, these brands)

It takes time to stop thinking organization language. Successful cheap-flight airlines like Aer Lingus and Ryanair are recognizing that, on the web, the customer controls the language.

When you no longer use the word "users" and instead have "readers", "customers", "mothers", "teenagers", "businessmen", then, and only then, can you create Killer Web Content.

- What is it is they care about reading?
- Do we have what they want to read?

We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our most important readers.

It's incredible hard to write for the reader and not for the ego. It means going against millions of years of human behavior.


I'd like to introduce you to mary and her daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer has been having a lot of teething problems lately - at least that's what the doctor says they are. Mary is not so sure. She has two other children and they didn't cry the way Jennifer does.

I'd also to introduce you to Tomas, a young and ambitious doctor. Tomas graduated 5 years ago and belongs to a group of general practice doctors in an affluent and fast-growing town. I know it's just a quick introduction, but a little later we'll get a chance to know Tomas, Mary, and Jennifer Better.

People like Mary are using the web to become much more educated and informed.

Writting for mothers like Mary required a significant mindset shift at Lagver. Doctor might have been confortable with a term like "cardiovascular disease" however, mothers preferred an expression like "heart disease".

(according to Overture, a leading seller of web advertising, 8863 people searched for cardiovascular disease in may 2005, while 196 173 searched for heart disease - 22 times more people. 

Let's say Mary wants to find out more about "baby health" into a search engine. Suppose she gets a set of results that includes links to the following websites:
. Her country's department of health
. A major health insurance company
. Company XYZ

Which link is she likely to click on?

It is a fallacy that you can reach everybody on the web. Try to reach everybody and you will certainly reach nobody.

Remember that when someone comes to your website you are charging them their time and their attention. If it takes too long for them to find what they need and if you lose their attention. If it takes too long because you have given so many choices, they will hit that most popular of buttons on the browner: The "back" button.

Please resist the desire to satisfy everyone in your organization by polluting your home page and website with every piece of content you have. This is a guaranteed recipe for disaster, and it is you who will ultimately be held to account.

A GREAT WEBSITE WILL TELL YOU ITS KILLER TASKS THE SECOND YOU LOOK AT IT

The new home page saved Aer Lingus. It changed it from an airline on the verge of bankruptcy to an airline that delivered the highest profit in its history.
In 2001, Aer Lingus was doing 3% of its booking online. In 2005, it was heading towards 70%, a phenomena achievement by any standard.

The new home page may not win any graphic design awards but, as far as marketing goes, it is hugely successful. There are three core target customers for this page:
1 The irish traveler
2 The american traveler
3 The british european traveler
However, there is one overriding message that is impossible to miss:
Book a cheap flight now!

The irish traveler represents the major share of Aer Lingus business, and so gets the lion's share of the home page.

On the web, it's all about the task, the task, the task. If you go to eBay.com, for example, you will likely see three big words running across the top of the page:

1 FIND           2 BUY            3 PAY

The rule on the web is; know your readers and know their key tasks. Have only content that helps them to complete these tasks. Everything else just gets in the way. Focus relentlessly until you discover the find-buy-pay of your website, and then make sure that people can start finding, buying, and paying the second they arrive.

I was in an airport recently, taking an escalator down to the trains. At the bottom of the escalator, there were three signs, all beginning with the letter T. What were they?

TRAINS           TICKETS          TOILETS

We read on the web as if we're coming down an escalator. We need very clear messages that meet our core needs.When we arrive at a homepage we expect to be able to understand what that website is about 30 seconds. What is your "Trains, Tickets and Toilets"?

The reader is IMPATIENT.

Nobody wants to wait; nobody wants to spend a second longer reading than they absolutely have to. Usability expert, John Rhodes talks about an ad used in the New York city subway system in the 1980s that read

If U Cn Rd Ths, U Cn Mk Bg Mny

The eye looks at a sentence, identifies the most important words - carewords - and then the mind makes lots of assumptions. That's why it is so hard to proofread your own work; you see what you thought you wrote rather than what you actually wrote.

What our eyes see is

If U Cn Rd Ths, U Cn Mk Bg Mny

What our mind understands is

If you can read this, you can make big money.

"Most people just look at the first couple of words - and only read on if they are engaged by those words" according to Eyetrack III a fascinating 2004 study of how people read on the Web. When reading, people zero in on the top of a page and the first half of the first sentence. Clearly, fromthis Eye track study, the top left of the page, followed by the centre, is where the eyes focuses most on a webpage.


Priority 1           Priority 2          Priority 3

Typical eye behavior on a webpage

You need to be armed with the six "Cs" when you sut down to write: 

1 Who Cares?
2 Is it Compelling?
3 Is it Clear ?
4 Is it Complete?
5 Is it Concise?
6 Is it Correct?

Let's look at how Amazon does it.

1. SEARCH Books: If you're on the wrong page, Amazon lets you quickly search again.

2. Book information: You can get quick links to editorial and customer rewiews of the book you're interested in.

3. Rate the item: You can rate the book - a classic word of mouth technique.

4. Favorite magazines: You are told about other products on offer. This is a major challenge.

5. Visit the software store: Again, you are told about other products.

6. See details: You can find out more about...

7. Buy both now: This button is that extra call to action.