Is your customer confused?
In our connected-all-the-time world, we are constantly having our attention pulled in different directions. How many times do you open your phone to do something and see a message you forgot to reply to (because you got distracted)?
With all this distraction, how do you reach your audience in a way that catches their attention?
In the world of marketing, clear is better than clever.
Whether it’s a wordy message, a cluttered logo or seizure-inducing scrolling banner, it’s easy to clutter your website. From a design and messaging perspective, less is (almost always) more. To understand this concept, it’s important to understand how people read a website.
Well… most don’t read it at all, they scan- specifically in a “Z” pattern from left to right. Scanning a website allows the viewer to absorb important info and reject what isn’t useful. According to one study, the average person spends 52 seconds scanning a webpage. This can vary depending on if you are a B2B or a B2C.
You might be thinking:
"But—don’t I want my audience to spend more time on my site?!"
More time spent on your site might mean that they’re wading through details about how your great-great grandfather planted an oak tree that became the foundation of their woodworking business and… i’ve lost you…because that isn’t relevant to you, or the point of this article. You know who also doesn’t find it relevant? Your customer. Your website should tell your customer’s story and how you guide them in their transformation. It should be easy for your customer to find what they’re looking for on your website.
In order to have a clear message you have to start with a clear audience. In episode 7 of the Growing a Fruitful Brand podcast, Raj and Ben break down this common marketing mistake and how starting with a clear, target audience helps clarify your message and web design.
Subscribe and don’t miss an episode. The Growing a Fruitful Brand podcast was made for you! Listen in as we share brand strategy and design tips aimed at helping you clarify your message and grow a brand that brings more to the world around you.
Join us for an exciting and inspiring episode wherever you enjoy podcasts and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!
Ep.7: Less is More
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand, where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and Art Director of Fruitful Design & Strategy, and this is my business partner and Brand Strategist, Raj Lulla.
Today on the podcast, we want to help you avoid one of the biggest mistakes that businesses make while they're communicating, clutter.
Raj Lulla:
So Ben, at the time that we are recording this, Queen Elizabeth II has just passed away. And so, world leaders, politicians, presidents, all those people, are issuing statements about their relationship with the Queen and honoring her. And one caught my attention in particular. It was one that George W. Bush wrote or somebody wrote for him. And he makes one mistake in it that if I can be so bold as to correct the President, that if he had switched things around just a little bit in his statement, it would have actually been a stronger statement and would have been a lot more helpful.
So I want to read it to you and then we'll talk about what's wrong here. So, "Laura and I were honored to have known Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. She was a woman of great intellect, charm, and wit. Spending time at Buckingham Palace and having tea with Her Majesty and her corgis is among our fondest memories of the presidency. Queen Elizabeth ably led England through dark moments with her confidence in her people and her vision for a brighter tomorrow."
So, a great statement, really honoring, talks about the relationship that they had, and makes it both personal and professional. A lot to really like here. But the thing that I hold against this statement is just the first sentence, "Laura and I were honored to have known Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II." It's a very boring way to start such a meaningful tribute.
Ben Lueders:
It's not a grabber, is it?
Raj Lulla:
No. It sounded like, "Yes, I knew that woman.”
Ben Lueders:
Right. You're the President of the United States, I bet you knew her.
Raj Lulla:
And of course, it was an honor to know a queen, so basically, every word in that sentence is a throwaway.
Raj Lulla:
And this is one of the biggest mistakes that businesses make in communicating, are they feel like if you're giving a speech, you have to thank people for listening or for letting you come. And so it's like, "Thank you. I'm very honored to be speaking with you today. I just flew in last night." We know all of these things. We know you don't live in our city. We know that you're honored to be here. You could just get to the point.
So, let's rewrite this just a little bit, and it's going to make it a stronger statement, again, if I can be as bold to rewrite a president here. So if we just start with, "Queen Elizabeth II was a woman of great intellect, charm, and wit. Spending time at Buckingham Palace and having tea with Her Majesty and her corgis is among our fondest memories of the presidency. Queen Elizabeth ably led England through dark moments with her confidence in her people and her vision for a brighter tomorrow." And then, you could even add to the end, "Laura and I were honored to know her." You could actually put that sentence in a different place and have it.
Ben Lueders:
So it's really similar, but what's the difference there?
Raj Lulla:
So the big difference is that Queen Elizabeth is really the subject of this statement. It's not, "Laura and I were honored to have known her." It's not about us. It's not about the President and his wife. It's about the Queen, about her memory. And so, if we shift the subject to the hero there, just go straight into it, "Queen Elizabeth was a woman of great intellect, charm, and wit." Go straight there instead of, "We were honored to know her. We met her a couple of times. She came to the White House, we went to Buckingham Palace." It's like, get to the point. "I think we had tea." Instead, just went straight into how great he thought she was.
That's such a more honoring statement because it doesn't even start with us, it starts with, "Man, she was amazing." And that changes the entire tone of it, makes it stronger, makes it punchier. And then, you can add that sentiment at the end, "We were honored to have known her.”
Raj Lulla:
That's great. And it actually has more impact for that statement as well, because, "Why were we honored to know her? Because of all of the things that I just said." Instead of, "We were honored to know her, and here are some reasons why." That's sort of the third-grade writing of a paragraph outline.
Raj Lulla:
Get your idea there and then support it with three sentences. Instead, let's have the main idea of this sentence be how great we thought that she was. And then, support it with some sentiment later on. Not all the rules that you learned in third grade about writing are applicable to public communication, to marketing, to advertising, and those things. So that's what-
Ben Lueders:
It's been a while since George W. Bush has been criticized so harshly by the media, but I know he listens to this podcast. So if you want Raj to help you write your next speech, just let us know.
Raj Lulla:
And again, if I can be as bold to edit a president, but this is something that every business leader, including us, struggle with, it is being concise. So today, we're going to talk about the rule that less is more, because it's not just in messaging, it's also in design.
Raj Lulla:
So I want to start with you. Let's start talking there. So can the design be cluttered? What do people do to clutter their designs?
Ben Lueders:
Everything under the sun, that's the point. The better question is, can design be simple?
Ben Lueders:
Because I think that a lot of times, it's a kind of a rookie designer mistake just to grab more ideas, more inspiration, more things, and to kind of just really clutter things up. You see it a lot in website design. There's just a lot of stuff there that just doesn't need to be there. One of the things that we're really committed to is a website is best and most effective when it's trying to accomplish really one thing.
Ben Lueders:
There's one call to action, there's one clear thing. But when people try to make their website everything, then it succeeds in doing nothing well. And it really kind of can confuse. And so, between having stuff like the company history and awards and certification that aren't really relevant to the person visiting the website, bad photos everywhere, or even as a graphic designer, I think sometimes we want a website that's cutting edge and trendy and has lots of movement and lots of graphics, just lots of elements that make it cooler maybe.
Ben Lueders:
But it's not really, it's not accomplishing or helping us get closer to the actual main goal of the website. It's distracting from what it could be doing by trying to be cool.
Raj Lulla:
. Now, one thing that not everybody knows about our relationship is that we actually started out where I was on the other side of the table, where you were my designer. I was working for a private college, and I hired you as a freelance designer. And so, I actually learned a lot of these lessons from you. I became a better communicator from working with Ben. And it is because I would ask him to make a flyer, a website, anything like that for us. And I would give him a ton of information about dates and times and locations and the history of the thing that we're trying to do, paragraphs of text, all of that. And then, he would ask me to cut it down. And that's something I've always actually really admired about you as a designer.
Ben Lueders:
Thank you, Raj.
Raj Lulla:
Is that you had the leadership to lead me as a client and you had the boldness to lead me as a client. And so, we mentioned that sometimes those designy things can be distracting. I would say that's probably 10% of what's wrong with websites. I think that 90% of what's wrong with websites is that the client says, "Hey, I'm the client. This is expensive. This is a big project for me. I need everything to be on here.”
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
"And so, designer, you're here to take orders from me." And what you did really well for me was push back and say, "Hey, I am here to serve you, but the best way I can serve you is for you to have less on here." And that makes it more powerful. It makes it easier for people to grab onto it right away. One of my favorite things that Donald Miller says is that "People don't read websites, they scan them.”
Ben Lueders:
That's definitely true for me.
Raj Lulla:
And you're telling the story of your brand. . And so, we scan headlines, we look at the bullet points, and then sometimes we go back for a second or third read of a website, and then we'll watch the video, then we'll read the paragraph. But the first time that we're introduced to something, we scan it to see if it's even relevant to us. So most of the time, and I'm not complaining about our clients, because we try really hard to serve our clients well in this area, but most of the time when there's too much stuff on a website, it's because the client asked for it and the designer just took the order. They didn't push back or lead the client.
Ben Lueders:
One of the classic ways that we see this, one of the ways that, man, I've seen this so many times and I know you have, too. You might be guilty of this, so sorry, I'm not trying to offend anybody. But the classic one is the old scrolling header.
Ben Lueders:
The graphic area at the top of a website. So what happens here is maybe the designer or a copywriter, they're trying to really hone in on what that main message is, that main point, right? And they might have gotten it down, but then the client is like, ", but we've got other main points. We've got other important things. And we have these events coming up. And we have all these... We have different audiences. Maybe, , we're speaking to this one audience, but we've got more audiences." So what do they say? "Hey, let's put a graphic at the top of the website that scrolls." And every five seconds, before you've had a chance to read the first one or even digest it, you're getting a whole new message. And it makes perfect sense from the client's perspective. The person building the site is like, "Look. I got all of the things I've ever wanted to say have now been saying, checked off the box."
The problem is, the people experiencing that, it's overwhelming. They don't have time to digest all the information. They're like, "Oh, I thought this was the point. Oh, this is another point. Oh, they got an event coming up." They don't know what to focus on. Sure, you've communicated your point, but it hasn't been received well. It's like trying to drink out of a fire hose. And that's one that is one of the first things that we do is try to steer people away from that kind of thinking. There are other places to share announcements, other mediums for sharing announcements, upcoming events, and other things. Trying to do all of that in this prime real estate area of the header of your website, is not the best design decision.
Raj Lulla:
So I'm going to challenge you here.
Raj Lulla:
Because the number one objection to this principle that I hear is, "But we have multiple audiences.”
"And so, we need three headers. We need those three or four messages at the top because this one is for this type of customer and this one's for this type of customer." From a design perspective, you say there are other ways to do that. How would you handle it if a client says, "Hey, we have three audiences, and so we can't just put one header, one message at the top of the website? We need three." What do you do with that?
Ben Lueders:
That one's really easy, Raj. Just hire us to do three different websites. It's going to cost you three times as much money, but we're going to make out like bandits. No, there are different ways of handling that, but I think one is that people will say, "Oh, we've got all these different audiences." But usually, when you really dig into it and really boil it down, they have one main thing, right?
Ben Lueders:
There really is. Now, there have been times where, and I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, there can be times when you can funnel those people out to different areas of your website. There are certain ways where, hey, if you're this type of person, let's say, "Hey, you want to work here at this business? You want to be a customer of this business?" There could be multiple things like that. But even there, I think the main thing is your website really can only do so many things effectively.
Raj Lulla:
. I have literally never met a company that has three equally sized audiences.
Ben Lueders:
. I think that's the point. Everyone does have slight variations in the audience, but they're not equal. I think you're fooling yourself to think that they are equal. And it's all about prioritization, right?
Ben Lueders:
And so, in graphic design, we think about this all the time, because the big word in graphic design is hierarchy. Yes, all this information is important, and it's all relevant, but it's not all equally important, and it all has to be emphasized in different ways, right? So the example I'll give is, let's say you're making an invite for a party or something like that, and you have all this information. It's all important, right? You need to know where it's at. You need to know what time it's at. You need to know the name or the kind of event it is and who's inviting you. All that stuff is important. But if you were to just lay it all out in the same font, the same size, the same color, it would be overwhelming.
Can you imagine just a piece of white paper with just a giant cloud of text? And it would be so hard to know where to go next. And you can't scan something like that. You'd have to get in the nitty gritty and probably take notes to even know what's happening. And that's where graphic design comes in, is trying to emphasize, break things out, group things, use color and font and stuff to make it so that it's just easier to digest and you're able to understand the importance of different things. And so, that's really all we're talking about here, is there's really only so many things you can do effectively in this limited amount of space.
Raj Lulla:
. I'm thinking of a wedding invitation here as you're saying that. And if it had all of those things, location and time and all of that, and you didn't mention the bride and groom's name until halfway down, you did kind of all of this who, what, when, where, why.
Ben Lueders:
It's like, "Who is this?”
Raj Lulla:
And so, you wait until the bottom to get to the why. Why? Because Becca and Steve are getting married. And it's like, that should definitely be at the top.
Ben Lueders:
Dude, this actually just happened.
Raj Lulla:
Really?
Ben Lueders:
So, one of our kids just got invited to another kid's birthday party.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, this is exactly it.
Ben Lueders:
No, no, no. The kids are not getting married. But it was the funniest thing because it had all the information, where it was at, what time, and all this stuff. And Meg was literally, my wife was literally just like, "Who is this for? I have an idea." And it was really small, they had handwritten in the corner. I think they were using a form. It was a stock invite. And they just had written in the corner, ". Here's who it's for." And it took the longest time to figure it out. And so , it's really ineffective. We almost didn't go to that party because it was just the way that the information was presented and the hierarchy of that information.
Raj Lulla:
So that's websites, that's print, design. What about logos?
Raj Lulla:
Is it possible to clutter up a logo? Do people do that? What does it look like, if you could tell me.
Ben Lueders:
Well, this is a really fascinating thing right now. And obviously, Raj, you know, but there's a big thing about debranding right now, like going ultra, ultra simple. Shapes are getting really simple. All the frills are being cut out. But just because that's happening to some of the biggest, most well-known companies right now, there is still a whole lot of confusion about what makes an effective logo. And there is a lot of clutter happening in logos. So one of the first things that I think of when I think of a cluttered logo is literally just a logo that has so much going on in it. There are so many curves, so many points, so many much fine detail.
Raj Lulla:
Shading, that kind of thing.
Ben Lueders:
Shading, , gradients, drop shadows, there's a little bit of that. It doesn't shrink down well. It's not usable. You saw a lot of logos like that back in the day before the advent of the internet and before people had... You had to shrink a logo down this tiny. That presents a whole host of new challenges that even the biggest brands have to have mobile versions of their logos to be able to use them. And so, that's one thing that you see a lot, is just too much extraneous detail that's just not necessary to communicate the point.
The other thing that you see too, is just kind of peripheral text around a logo. So the one I make fun of a lot, and again, so sorry if this is you. But I think a lot of times people are so excited when they become a new business, they're like, "Hey, I'm an actual LLC." And what do they do? They put LLC in the name of their... That's literally the name of their business. We're Fruitful Design, LLC, technically.
Raj Lulla:
And it's not in our logo?
Ben Lueders:
It's not in our logo.
Raj Lulla:
Let's go fix that right now.
Ben Lueders:
But our logo isn't Fruitful, LLC, is it? And think of it this way. I think some people think, "Oh man, this makes me so legitimate. I want to put it in there." But just think of the biggest companies that you know. If you saw the Apple logo or the Nike logo with LLC at the end, right?
Raj Lulla:
Nike doesn't even use their name in their logo.
Ben Lueders:
No. It's just the swoosh. So that's the point, is the most effective and the biggest brands you see actually have the least amount of stuff going on. And so, sometimes when you add always having your full tagline in your logo or always having the LLC or the year you're founded in your logo, that actually hurts your credibility, I think. It kind of makes you actually look more amateurish, which I think is the opposite of what people are going for.
Raj Lulla:
Trying for, .
Ben Lueders:
It's like, "No, we were founded in 1887. That's such a…"
Raj Lulla:
We've been around for a long time.
Ben Lueders:
"This is such a selling point." And maybe there's a place for that somewhere else in your communication, but definitely not in your logo.
Raj Lulla:
Well, and even that piece of authority, right? Founded in 1887. Sure, maybe for a bank, you want to make sure that they're not going to close up shop during the depression and be like a…
Ben Lueders:
"We've been through a lot of hard times, so trust us.”
Raj Lulla:
. It's a Wonderful Life, and everybody's trying to get their cash out of the bank, and it's like, "Hey, we've been around. We went through that. We're still here." , maybe, but for most other businesses, I honestly wouldn't care if my landscaper's company is fourth generation and they've been around for a hundred years or more. And it's like, "Cool. I can't ask anybody who was around in 1887 if you did a great job?”
Ben Lueders:
Well, the best ones are the ones that are founded yesterday.
Raj Lulla:
In some ways, .
Ben Lueders:
So it's like "Founded in 2022.”
Raj Lulla:
This will age well, eventually.
Ben Lueders:
I think there's a boldness there. It's like, "Hey, we're planning to be here a long time so that someday this will look..." But the point is, it's clutter. It's not necessary. Again, there may be a place for it maybe, maybe in your LinkedIn bio. But I would argue, and I think most designers would be on my side on this, there's no place for it in your actual logo.
Raj Lulla:
One that sticks out to me is Ace Hardware said Ace Hardware in their logo. Okay. Great. Pretty standard. They took away the word hardware, and now it says Ace, the Helpful Place, which ironically, to me is less helpful. It's in their logo. They took out the main descriptor of what they are. And it's like, "Can I show up to Ace and just drop my kids off? Will you babysit?" Because that would be helpful to me, right?
Ben Lueders:
"We will help you with literally anything." Well, okay.
Raj Lulla:
Shine your shoes.
Ben Lueders:
So I'm glad you mentioned that. All right? So we've been kind of ragging on LLC and taglines and stuff, but people might be thinking, "Wait. Does this mean I should get rid of the descriptor in my logo?" And so, this is kind of an interesting point, because you see a lot of people doing this differently. For example, famously, Apple doesn't even have the word Apple. It's literally just an apple now. And sometimes you'll see Nike spelled out, but almost always just that swoosh.
Raj Lulla:
And Apple used to be Apple Computer.
Ben Lueders:
Exactly.
Raj Lulla:
And so, they were even further.
Raj Lulla:
They've gone back twice here in simplicity.
Ben Lueders:
And so, I would say rule of thumb is if you're a huge brand that's been around a long, long time, and you have the benefit of people all around the world in different languages and cultures, they can see your logo and know exactly what you are, you have the luxury of maybe dropping computers off there, dropping that off. But for a lot of people, especially when they're just starting, it is helpful to have a helpful-
Raj Lulla:
Description.
Ben Lueders:
... descriptor. Now for us, our logo most often is seen as just Fruitful, and that's pretty common with a lot of agencies. But we do have a version of our logo that is Fruitful Design and Strategy. That's what it says on our door because we think that would be helpful for people that aren't familiar with it. And we have a seal that says Fruitful Design and Strategy spelled out.
Raj Lulla:
And we actually added the word strategy several years after I joined the company because people didn't necessarily realize that that was a service that we offered.
Raj Lulla:
And it's half of what we do here.
Raj Lulla:
So sometimes, it's actually helpful to be more descriptive in your branding. It really kind of just depends on how well known your company is and if people are really understand. We probably could have gone the other direction and gotten rid of Design and it had just been Fruitful, like this logo behind us here, and been just as well off. But being just Fruitful Design was confusing to people.
Raj Lulla:
So we either had to go to one more descriptor or go to no descriptor at all. We chose to go the other direction because it was helpful to our audience.
Ben Lueders:
Exactly. If your brand gets to a point where you're like, "Man, we are so well known. We have so many billions of dollars in the bank. No one has ever confused... We should get rid of the descriptor on our logo.”
Ben Lueders:
With those billions, we'll just take it right off your logo. It's totally fine.
Raj Lulla:
That's right.
Ben Lueders:
We'd love to help you remove the descriptor from your logo and charge you money for it. But I would venture to guess that that's not most of the people watching this and listening to this. And so, having a helpful descriptor, that's good. But it's all that extra extraneous stuff. The last thing I want to say is, one that kind of popped into my mind, is you see this not super often, but having the name of your company in the symbol of your company logo, and also having the name next to it. So if any of you are familiar with the company, West, West Corporation, they literally have, their logo is a square with the word West inside of it, and then it says West next to it. So it's like-
Raj Lulla:
West, West.
Ben Lueders:
That's the kind of stuff we're talking about, where it's like, this is not really helpful. We need to simplify this stuff so it doesn't cause confusion or eye rolls.
Raj Lulla:
. And I think part of that in some of those situations, because I think West is, it's just a square, right?
Raj Lulla:
With the word West in it. And so they're like, "Well, we can't take away the word West because then it's just a square." And it's like, "Cool, let's come up with a better mark then." Or just get rid of the mark entirely. You could just have a type mark be your identity. But having both just is confusing. Is it West West? Is it West Squared? Is it just West one time, the other West is silent?
Raj Lulla:
Sorry, West. We would love to work with you.
Ben Lueders:
That's really all this is. So Raj, we've been talking about design for a long time, but this is obviously something that happens a lot in messaging as well, right? And that's kind of more your side of the house. So how have you seen companies getting cluttered in their messaging?
Raj Lulla:
We already talked about how companies clutter speeches. Videos kind of have the same thing of, "Hi, everyone. Welcome to whatever corporation." You don't need to do those things. In fact, you're often, I would say almost always, better off if you start with, "Do you want to work at a place where you feel valued?" Instead of, "At such and such a place, we value every employee." You have to get straight to what the audience actually needs to hear instead of doing what you feel like is the perfunctory, obligatory introduction. "We've been here since 1887," whatever, all of those things at the top of the speech, the top of the video. Think about the way that a Gen Zer or even a younger Millennial would start a video on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram.
Ben Lueders:
Think about those forms of media, just kind of shorter and shorter and you have to get right to point.
Raj Lulla:
No Gen Zer, no young Millennial starts a video with, "Hello, I'm Sam. I'm an expert in blah blah." They just don't do that at all. They get right to the point. They can be mocked, rightfully so, for the, "Hey, guys" kind of thing.
Raj Lulla:
Just hopping on here to give an update on the construction of my pool. But the good videos, the ones that catch your attention, start with a clear issue, a clear problem, a clear aspiration that your audience has, and you just get right to it.
Now, Ben talked a little bit before about clutter on a website. Company history is definitely one of those things. It absolutely does not belong on your homepage. The only little piece of company history that you should put on your homepage is in the authority section of your website. And again, this is kind of assuming you have a story branded website that clearly calls out the problem, the stakes of not solving that problem, then gets to the solution and your authority to solve that. In the authority section, if you want to say something like, "For over a hundred years, we've been helping customers solve this particular problem" as your authority, that's fine.
It is absolutely not fine to say, "Since my grandpa started this business with one truck and three chickens, whatever, a hundred years ago, that's our authority," no. People have stopped reading. They're already gone. You just get straight to why is this relevant to you? Why is this authority?
You see this all the time in flyers, signs, billboards. One of my favorite things is when people want to put really small text on a road sign, like a monument sign for a business, and it's got their Instagram handle. And it's like, I'm driving by this at 45, 50 miles an hour.
Ben Lueders:
Even billboards, too. Here's a billboard and it's this huge piece of real estate up there. And so, people are like, "Oh, we've got all this room, we can put all these words." And it's like how many car accidents have those caused trying to get in all the, "Oh, we're on the second paragraph now." And really, the most effective ones have two words on them.
Raj Lulla:
Why would you ever put your phone number on a billboard? First of all, I'm not supposed to be, before the days of even having cell phones, they would do this, have it up on a billboard. And it's like, I hope it's super memorable. If it's like 1-800, I don't know, SAVE-RATS or something. That's too many. I was trying to think of something that was silly.
Ben Lueders:
Save rats? What on earth?
Raj Lulla:
SAVE-CATS, SAVE-DOGS, that's still eight. But anyway, the point is, if you insist on getting a billboard, which is not necessarily my first recommendation for your marketing, but if you do it, then you'd be better off just having a clear description of the problem that you solve and maybe a clear call to action. So, "We waterproof basements. Call today for your free estimate." You don't even really need to put your phone number on there. In fact, I'd advise against it. People aren't going to capture that while they're driving by at 60 miles an hour. They're probably even better off trying to just get Siri to call you if they're going to call you from the road. "Hey Siri, call Thrasher," or something like that.
But otherwise, there's just no point in putting that information on there. There's not even really much point in putting your website on there. Your logo, the problem you solve, and a call to action. Again, if you're going to do a billboard. If you're thinking about a billboard, there are about a million more ways to be effective, and call us, and we'll offer some of those to you. I'll tell you what they offer for free.
Ben Lueders:
Absolutely. So, Raj, we've talked about less is more, less is more, less is more. Is less always more?
Raj Lulla:
No. Thanks for asking. No. . Less is more, except when it's not. Sometimes, sometimes, more is more. But there's one specific time that that's true, and that's when you're being generous with your audience. You want to give them things of value as often as you can afford to.
And so, let's talk about what that means. We're doing a website for a company called Arcadia Construction right now. And one of the questions they get often, very frequently, is, "How much does it cost to do any kind of renovation?" And so, on their website, they're just going to include a free renovation estimator, a worksheet that will help people kind of get a ballpark, not maybe down to the exact figure, but a ballpark of how much it's going to cost.
Ben Lueders:
That is so cool.
Raj Lulla:
And that's something of value. And so, as often as you can afford to give away information that's of value to your audience, the more favorable they're going to be to your brand. And especially when the economy is a little bit goofy, and every other week somebody is predicting either a dire recession or "We're on the rebound," and people are maybe holding their dollars a little bit more tightly, this is a good way to just build that relationship with them while they're not ready to purchase. And who knows? Even by the time this airs, it could be that week we'll either hear that the economy is being hit by a meteor or it'd be like, "Golden days are here again." It's going to be one or the other. Who knows. But the point is, this is why you should always be offering as much value to your customers as you can for free.
And another organization that does this really well, NP Dodge, we've had the opportunity to connect with them several times. And they position themselves as a local expert on great restaurants, and attractions in the city. They make it great to live in our city, or at least they show you why it's great to live in the city. And they're not selling those restaurants. They probably would if you asked them to, sell your restaurant, at least you're real estate for it, but that's not why they're doing it. They are doing it to help people who want to live here, to buy a home here. And it's a service to people who do live here or want to live here. And I think that's just such a great way of them providing value to their potential customers, to people who just live here, and they elevate their brand in the process.
Another example, if we can be a little bit self-serving here, is this podcast. Today, we're helping you avoid a communication mistake that almost everyone makes, and we're doing it for free. And we don't necessarily get anything out of it other than just we want to be helpful to you. And if in the future you have a communication problem you don't know how to answer, then hopefully, you'll see us as people who could be a good resource to you. But in the meantime, you can take action on this. You can just take exactly what we talked about today and go get to work on it, for free, and we're here to help you.
Ben Lueders:
So, speaking of action, what is a call to action that we could leave our audience with today? If there was one thing they could do to embody this "less is more" principle, what would we suggest they do?
Raj Lulla:
Take whatever you're about to communicate next, and try to cut it down by 50%. I know it sounds extreme, but believe me, if you're writing a headline for a website and it's 10 words, see if you can get it down to five. If you are writing a speech, then cut down as much as you can of the "Thank you for having me here," all of that kind of banter stuff at the beginning. Just get straight to the point, "Hey, do you have this problem? Here's how we solved it." People will thank you for being that clear, that direct. And then, if you need to tack it on to the end of, "It's been a pleasure being with you today," whatever, some kind of call to action, that's great. But just get straight to the point. And so, that's for messaging. Literally, try to cut the number of words that you're going to communicate in half and your audience will thank you.
Ben Lueders:
Same goes with design, though.
Ben Lueders:
If your website is a certain size, see if, "Hey. Could we do with 50% of these pages? Or 50% of the copy or images on the pages, how could we be more concise?" And basically think of that as making it stronger. Think of that as a positive thing, that less truly is more when it comes to your website and even your branding as well.
Raj Lulla:
Can we have fewer things in our navigation on our website? Can we have fewer calls to action? Because you really only have one main call to action on your website, and then you can have a transitional one that collects email addresses. But if you have "learn more," kind of all those things scattered across your website, cut it down to one main call to action. So we called out the 50% Rule.
Raj Lulla:
Try to cut everything down to 50% of what you were going to communicate, and it will be stronger.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website, fruitful.design. So until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
