Archive for September, 2008

I thought this story in the Onion was pretty funny, and I think you might enjoy it, too. So I’m going to reach… and stretch… and twist… it into a Water Words post. The humor comes from the story’s twisted perspective — the lion perceives the hikers very differently from how the hikers perceive the lion.

Click here to read the story in the Onion.

So now imagine you are an everyday citizen. You mean well, you like nature, and you don’t like pollution. But you’re preoccupied with your daily life, the problems all seem so big, and you don’t see anybody else doing anything. And while you’re going about your day, minding your own business, some expert sneaks up on you and starts throwing around a bunch of intimidating vocabulary and giving you an expectant look…

Photo Credit: Amnemona via Flickr

MORE social research documenting how important it is for you to plaster pictures of faces — particularly eyes — all over your brochures, websites, posters, mailers, etc… Not sure how I missed this the first time around, but last year the Washington Post reported on a Harvard University study that compared people’s charitable behavior when they looked at different images on their computer screens.

The result: Participants gave 30% more when there was a picture of a robot face on the screen.

A robot?!?!?!?

30%?!?!?!?!?

Imagine the difference if it was a picture like the one above.

OK you nonprofit people out there, true confessions time — how many of you have faces on your fundraising materials? Seems like an easy way to give yourself a big raise.

Hat tip to Anita at the Jed Foundation for posting this tidbit to the Progressive Exchange.

The latest issue of “Free Range Thinking” reviews a new book by Ginny Redish called “Letting Go of the Words,” which contains advice for developing websites that actually hook visitors instead of scaring them off. The book compiles a vareity of information from “usability studies” — research projects that methodically monitor how Internet users behave when they visit a website for the first time, and tweak those sites to increase the how long visitors stay and how deeply they explore.

I’ll confess that I haven’t read the book yet, just the interview with the author — but I agree with what she has to say. Describing the most common mistake she sees, Ginny says:

The top one is probably dense text — walls of words. They send the message ‘This is going to be really hard for you to deal with.’

She notes that businesses and organizations of all kinds share this weakness with nature protection and pollution control organizations:

…people have a hard time letting go of their words. Internal focus happens because the user isn’t at the table when the site is being built.

Check out Letting Go of the Words. It’s written about websites but it seems like it’s got good advice for a wide variety of marketing and communications efforts.

Widgets are a modern web marketing technique where you invite somebody to put your badge on their website. EPA reports that it’s first foray into the world of widgets, was a success. The environmental tips, a brief update written in citizen-friendly language shares things you can do to protect nature and control pollution. It has generated a lot of interest. EPA reports:

… the ‘environmental tip of the day,’ released last spring, was seen 363,000 times in June after it was posted, which is more than any single page on EPA’s Web site other than the home page.

One of the neat things about widgets, at least compared to regular advertising, is that EPA knows how many people clicked on it. So I predict with confidence, that within in a few weeks, EPA will know that its sequel, the “Find Your Watershed” widget, seen below, is a comparative flop.

<br /> id=”zipcodewatershed” SCROLLING=”no”<br /> MARGINWIDTH=”0″ MARGINHEIGHT=”0″<br /> SRC=”http://epa.gov/owow/zipcode_widget.html”>

The reason, of course, is that the term “watershed” is pure eco-shop talk. So for everyday non-scientist citizens, the amount of curiosity that the “Environmental Tip of the Day” widget evokes compared to the “Find Your Watershed” widget is like night and… um… day.

“Pshaw!” you say? “Lots of people will be see the ‘Find your Watershed‘ widget and be moved to learn more,” you hope?

In a few weeks, EPA will have some hard numbers that will settle it: — 363,000 visitors responding to a “words that work“-ish message of the environmental tips vs. some number TBD who respond to a “words that don’t“-ish message of the watershed widget.

I’ll see if I can persuade the agency to release the results.

Hat tip to the Lake Stewardship Blog for spotting the widget.