

Words I'd ban from all websites - dpapathanasiou
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/25929.imc

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Semiapies
#2? Feh. Keep "Please" and "Thank you", just use them with reasonable
frequency. Politeness doesn't hurt anything.

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ugh
The “Thank You! As a small business, your purchase means the world to us. Let
us know if we can ever be of assistance for anything!” on Panic’s receipt made
me very happy.

I don’t really have to know that they are a small business and happy about my
purchase – I don’t need that info to use the software – but I very much
appreciated them putting that “Thank You!” there.

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ErrantX
#5 is untrue, I'm a Brit and run Brit focused sites; there is little
difference between using tick or check. Shipping is also better understood
over delivery in the context of the internet too.

(I've done no testing on this; purely based on various pieces of feedback over
the years)

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed. I'm a Brit and I moved to Canada, I've noticed very little difference
in the commercial-language we use.

Brits are like the tale about the Eskimo's and their quantity of words for
snow; only we have 30 slang words for every common word we use. I personally
didn't realise it, it was my wife who has to ask me to repeat things in
English because we'll get onto a conversation subject we haven't touched
before (or in a long time) and I'll be full-accent, full-slang and she doesn't
have a clue what I just said.

Honestly, through the multitude of accents present in the UK, I found that 95%
of people can understand anything you present to them so long as it's in some
acceptable (note not _accepted_ ) form of the English language. The similar is
wholly untrue of Americans and Canadians who are just shit out of luck when it
comes to accents.

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YuriNiyazov
Please remove the number from the title.

From the guidelines: If the original title begins with a number or number +
gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10
Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when
the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

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jamesbritt
:)

I was hoping that "N $somethings$" was part of the list of things to ban.

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run4yourlives
The war on "Click Here" has been waging since at least 2003 or so, but you
know what? "Click Here" works. It works really well too.

You might not like it, but that's the way it is.

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jonpaul
I'd ban 'sexy'... it's one of the most overused adjectives to describe
products.

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chegra84
First of all there is no data presented to back what she is saying. She is
implicitly asking people to stop using these ten words based on her own
authority. Also, I dislike the tone of the article; it seems like it's, again,
coming from an authority, using words like :"Wrong","Pointless","Fine". I
guess I like my pieces to be written with humility and facts. :D

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lionhearted
The problem is, the author suggests banning words just based on her personal
impression of them without testing or feedback. Some of those words or phrases
- Welcome, please, click here - might perform better in A/B testing than
anything else for some sites and products. If so, they should be used.
"Features" is the understood jargon and common navigation in certain
industries.

Actually, she did mention testing once:

> After I mentioned this at an industry event last year, a travel company
> contacted me to say they simply removed ' * denotes mandatory field' and
> replaced it with 'you must fill in the boxes marked * ' and saw an immediate
> uplift in conversions.

See, that's good. That's how you do it. Change if conversions or goals reached
are going up when there's measurable goals. For more subjective stuff, sure,
maybe make it spicier, entertaining, literally descriptive, or concrete. But
it's a bit silly to say "the word 'solutions' is overused, don't use it".
There's a reason people use the word solutions, which is that it's the most
effective word lots of times. But don't take anyone's word on it, split test
it on your own site and use whatever works best. Don't blindly go with
intuition, intuition is often wrong.

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hga
_Very_ good. Here's one of the less obvious ones (at least it was to me):

" _4\. '_ * _denotes mandatory field'

No one uses this language in the real world._"

The article goes on to e.g. say has measurable bottom line consequences.

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Semiapies
Except I always see " _is_ a mandatory field" or at worst " _indicates_ a
mandatory field", which people understand just fine.

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lotharbot
Or " * is a required field", or even " * required."

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keltex
Here's what I would do. I would run A/B tests on all these different flavors
of copy. If conversions are higher or equal, sure make the change. But if
conversions are lower with these phrases removed, leave them up!

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wenbert
Although the article has valid points, banning these words would be the last
thing on my mind. I think it is all about creating a better experience for
your users/readers.

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aresant
Good stuff there, but her point #3, eliminating "click here" is misinformed if
you're transacting commerce / leads / etc.

I see her point for content sites, but one of the easiest ways to lift action
conversions is to add "Click Here" to your link / button / etc.

Two reasons this works:

a) Most people recognize that underlined text is a link, but a signifigant
proportion do not.

b) Adding clear action-oriented verbiage drives conversion increases nearly
every time - people want to be told what to do next and the clearer it is, the
higher your conversions.

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zalew
\- buy

\- read more...

\- next step

\- sign in

\- watch the full video

Every 'click here' has a meaningful replacement for the desired call-to-
action.

Also, you need to read everything around the 'click here' to know what the
'click' does. Naming it with a meaning can result a quicker action.

 _no research made, just my POV_

~~~
aresant
Great point. Put into the list of "always be testing" and run all variantions.

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kpanghmc
#11. "Rockstar"

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TotlolRon
She lost me at "welcome". Come to think of i'd actually use most of what she'd
ban.

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zeynel1
This is off-topic, but I see in some legal documents the phrase "internet
website" as in "The comment summary is also available on our Internet website
at
<[http://www.sec.gov/rules/extra/s71002commsumm.htm>.](http://www.sec.gov/rules/extra/s71002commsumm.htm>.)
<http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ia-2091.htm>

Are there any other kinds of websites that they need to refer to their site as
"internet website?"

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jbrennan
Intranet websites.

~~~
zeynel1
Is there a need to emphasize that the website referred to is an "internet"
website and not an "intranet" website? Should Yahoo! say "visit our internet
website at yahoo.com?" Or even the least sophisticated user knows that
yahoo.com is an "internet" website? Wikipedia does not even list "internet"
website as "type of website."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website#Types_of_websites>

~~~
ismarc
It's not a "type of website", but instead "location of website", identifying
the network that the website lives on. Let's say there's an intranet, internet
and extranet available. Identifying the specific network that a resource lives
on is important to distinguish if it's publicly accessible and what handling
procedures are used when working with it as dictated by the policies of the
particular network it resides on.

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count
This is a bigger deal in the government, especially the DoD, where there might
be an Internet website, a NIPRnet website, a SIPRnet website, a JWICS website,
etc. So, sometimes it's appropriate - for most companies, probably redundant.

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mdg
I was really trying to hate on this chicks page, and then I checked it out,
and it is the type of conciseness I could only dream of.

EDIT: I was being serious? There is not any fluff, nor a wasted word.

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blasdel
_> There is not any fluff, nor a wasted word._

Except yours, here.

~~~
mdg
oh, well did you read my comment? That is exactly what I was speaking of.

