“Labrow Marketing has been an absolute pleasure to work with. Peter Labrow is incredibly knowledgeable, talented and approachable. He is never short of ideas and is very willing to discuss them.”
Emma Power, e-academy
Communications clarity
Helping organisations to communicate more clearly and successfully on the Web
People often underestimate one of the greatest impacts of the Web, which is how it is driving greater informality in written communications. As a result, many websites often use inaccessible, inflated language – often referred to as ‘marketing speak’. Such sites have grand-sounding words that communicate little of substance – and take a great deal of effort to read.
Communications clarity review
We can review a website, to assess the clarity of the site’s language and message – to ensure that key information is being delivered succinctly. As part of this we also review how the content is structured – research shows that users don’t read Web pages, they ‘scan’ them, looking for key information. To aid in this process, pages should be broken down with headings, bullets, links and images – so we also recommend how changing the structure of the content can make it more approachable. We assess:
- the complexity of the language used.
- the style and tone of the text.
- the clarity of the message being conveyed.
- any negative impact of inaccessible language.
Taking a wider view
As with all of our website reviews, we don’t approach communications clarity in isolation – for example, there’s little to be gained by radically simplifying a site’s language if its search engine results suffer, so we would assess the text for search engine effectiveness at the same time. We can also assess a website against those of peers, partners and competitors.
Helping organisations to communicate more clearly
For organisations that manage their own website content on an ongoing basis, we can provide coaching on effective copywriting and content creation – helping people avoid many common pitfalls.