Sunday, March 2. 2008
Communicating emoticons
This is not meant as a sentimental entry. It's about marketing and communicating a message to your potential users. Too often I find myself at a website of an Open Source project and ask myself. "where am I now? what the -beep- is this? and what can I do with it?"
As personal example I take kmess.org as example. We tried really hard to fix this. The site is a lot of content nowadays, but we think there is a lot of room for improvement. While discussing this we Valerio came up with the following blog entry:
Why Ubuntu 8.04 needs better marketing
That article shows the big difference between a summary of technical details and something that appeals. Their revised announcement makes me all of a sudden excited about downloading Ubuntu 8.04. Less technical wording, clearly written sentenses and focus on what advantages does it has for me. Worth reading, this article is written really well!
In the comments there is also a nice observation:
The key however is to, like Apple, make a directly emotional appeal. Even Intel claims to be trying to take this route, inspired by Apple (successfully? Maybe). Take a look at Apple’s OS X page: http://www.apple.com/macosx/. The bold heading is very dominant. And it doesn’t really contain too much logic… again, it is an emotional appeal.
I really like Apple's site. It makes me enthusiastic about their products, and while browsing it just goes on. Yet I can also find a lot of technical details there. I couldn't describe why, but now I'm starting to understand the key aspect here: emotions.
Another example: Last week I was on a holiday/journey, and tried to explain a bit Aikido to the guy next to me. It's the martial art I practice and love. In the years I developed a few short phrases to explain it but somehow my description didn't get though at all. 
Fortunately I got a little advise whispered in my other ear: "you are too technical". Dang! I'm currently inspired by "feeling first, mind later" theories and this is another eye opener for me. By using more vague descriptions adjusted to the receiver (communicating a feeling/emotion) the other guy managed to get it a lot better. Whoa. Using less strict descriptions actually makes people grasp something better?
This incident among others makes me realize a lot of people are probably wired this way (call them alpha's if you wish). As technicians we love to communicate details, and the receiver can reconstruct the same image in their mind. Most people are not like that, or can't manage to be so. I didn't expect this gap could be so big. I noticed how this guy next to me responds much better while communicating an emotion, feeling or vague description (which you can technically put down as inaccurate, misleading, etc..). It has a strong effect, as the message is received in a more powerful way.
Meanwhile I'm starting to get an itch to do something with this conclusion within the KMess website too.
If a lot of people are wired this way, shouldn't our websites reflect that?
I'd like to call it "communicating emotions". 
<shameless-plug>We're looking for more ways to improve the KMess website. If you have suggestions, don't wait any longer and post them!</shameless-plug>
Regarding the site, I'm thinking more about an opening page like http://basket.kde.org/ or http://www.getfirefox.com/
last thing we need are (more) incoherent zealots...
I've also heard it put that sizzle sells more than steak (ie bbq lovers don't salivate over the word / data "steak" like they do hearing one sizzling and imagining enjoying the experience of one soon.
"communicating emotions", that isn't something new, it is something pretty pretty old, and, if you take a time to see the TV or any Publication, you'll notice that the successful ADs appeals to feelings in some way (and the better examples are the AD of Cocacola or Pepsi)
But maybe one of the more preoccupying things about the article is the fact that it just uncovers a fact: "They are unaware about what does need their target market".
And, yes... maybe someone might come here and say me that it isn't true, and that "http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/" is a result of that. Well, I just will say that "It demonstrates that Ubuntu is broken from design" (And I'm not talking about software)
Just sit up a moment and see what kind of comments and ideas are posted there... see what kind of proposal they are... they are almost technical, isn't that true?... so, think carefully:
How many of them are geeks?
How many of them aren't?
The answer is obvious, big part of them are geeks, people who are in some way kinda advanced in what they know about Linux and so... what is intimidating for new users, and specially those that never have used ever Linux.
And, maybe this isn't just a problem that is just on Ubuntu, it is rather in almost any Linux community. In few words, I have discovered that the communities tend to be "unexperienced-user-hostile", what I mean with that? ... well, that the user need to know for example basic things like: "how to use the command line", "What is a superuser", "how to compile a program" to get a kind of help, and sometimes, they just get an answer like: "Google it", "you n00b, use -command-", and so...
Ubuntu have actually taked the Hard Way, why? ... because they try to become human something that was designed for technicians, and they haven't do a bad work, but even, there is still a very long long way ahead... and they missed the way by now.
They need to focus again in their market: "The human being".
This was my two cents.
(PD: It appears perfect to me that you think about re-design your site to made it more User-friendly, and if you need someday help with it, you may count with my help too)
(PD2: Too much for a single post XD)
. I agree with the observations you're sharing here.Doing marketing as software engineer is really hard. It's not your expertise (I'm tempted to buy a marketing for dummy's book) and requires a vastly different focus on the same product. As programmer you have an understanding of the deepest details (vertical focus). As marketeer you focus at the outside at a horizontal level looking at the bigger picture. I'm really happy what I've been able to achieve and improve in the past few years, but I know it can be a lot better.
Oh, and I've made the mistake of giving unfriendly responses too, even recently, though I despise that way of treating users.
I really appreciate your offer and I'd love to hear more about your suggestions for our website.
Currently I'm making baby steps (like the updates to the homepage), but would love to revise the site completely. How about discussing this over mail ("vdboor" --at-- "codingdomain.com") or msn ("vdboor" --at-- "hotmail.com")?
But, integrating both jobs, I can say that, for example, the programmer is the one that focus on the inner part, the functionality of a product to made it perfect in any possible way, while the marketeer is the one that makes it look cute and nice (the outside) to made it friendly with their potential costumers =3
And, I'll contact XD ... but, if there will be need to be marketing here, maybe it will need to start from ground =3 (I mean, putting again the basis if needed =3)
No problem! We thought about this ourselves too. These babysteps or patchwork I'm doing now eases the pain, but that's about it. We're more then willing to restart from scratch.
