Put your audience first

You may have seen this making the rounds: ¶ 

A typical website visit in 2022

1. Figure out how to decline all but essential cookies
2. Close the support widget asking if I need help
3. Stop the auto-playing video
4. Close the “subscribe to our newsletter” pop-up
5. Try and remember why I came here in the first place

— Andy Budd (@andybudd) January 2, 2022

The parallels between good design, good writing, and good user experience are revealing. Writing and design might as well be aspects of the same thing.

Which they are. 

A good user experience (swap in reader, viewer, listener, audience) is effective because it respects the people on the other end of your work. The people you are trying to reach, help, influence, persuade, empower, and move.

The written equivalent of Andy Budd's crappy website experience is the story front loaded with institutional agenda at the expense of the substance the reader cares about. 

This rarely includes the list of your grant partners or the history of your organization.

If you are responding to events, don't get bogged down in recap, and don't let the first paragraph go by without telling your audience what that response is.

If your mission matters

Your agenda is important, whether you aim to inform, activate, or ask for support. So, to promote your agenda, don't clutter the beginning with...your agenda. 

Instead, empower your audience with what's new, what's important, and what they need to know. Work the rest in organically.

Your readers will lap it up. Isn't that what you want?

Take a few hints from news writing and cut to the chase. Write dynamite leads that are both summaries and roadmaps.

Andy Budd, above, is hit with so many distractions he forgets why he is even paying attention. A mass of throat-clearing sentences (ahem! ahem!) has the same effect on readers.

Want to respect your mission? Respect your audience.

The rest of Andy's tweet stream is worth reading too.

photo: Oregon Department of Transportation