Carewords: The key to action

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.