Copy-first vs. design-first websites

0:03[Music] let's get to the good stuff because we have a battle to go through just like uh the Lord of the Rings and The Star Wars um welcome to the factory floor if you're listening uh my name is Nick okay I have my two beautiful uh lovely co-hosts one of them is Corey Haynes and the other is Zach Stevens uh and we are the founders of conversion Factory we help um SAS Founders uh build their marketing engines and today we're going at it okay there's going to be a battle okay copy of first websites versus design first websites I have brought of course my copywriter Corey Haynes and my my designer Zack Stevens and uh I am hoping that they argue about this that is my one goal I don't think it's going

0:53to happen because I think we agree but I figured we would just start there uh and maybe you guys can argue um but anyway so that's what we're going to get into gentlemen anything you want to say in the intro here of the thing before we get into the topic I'm doubtful that we're going to argue and I'm the designer I know yeah maybe you can play Double's Advocate just for the fun of it or I can argue the side of design first that'd be fun ooh ooh okay I actually don't know if I could I don't think there's enough I don't think there's or we can just tell the truth I think that's good too yeah let's do that uh so the first thing we want to get into is what is the point point of a website and obviously we're going to do this through

1:32the context of design first versus copy first but um what is the point of a website Cory why don't you as as the as the marketer kick us off yeah this is something that it's funny because when I was thinking about this topic I was thinking back to when I was first getting into marketing and it feels so easy and nice to be like oh let me just take this template of this nicely designed website that somebody already built and that I can just like f in the blanks and easy peasy snip snap I have a nice polish finished website after this um and then I actually tried to do that and I realized that that doesn't work super well um the end result is almost always bad because you're working within constraints that you're not supposed to

2:20be uh constrained by so when we talk about what's the point of a website right like what we want the end goal is a really good website what does a really good website do a really good website communicates something that compels someone to buy your thing right that's really all the the point is you just need people to click that buy button there's a lot of like you know different variations of what that buy button is and there can be secondary call to actions and lots of other tangential goals of a website but at the end of the day your website is your digital storefront right it's like this is the place that people go to in order to buy from from you and the biggest like ingredient to making it successful is

3:07what the website says not how it looks and so here in lies the problem Cory did you um how many iterations did it take on that first like oh let me get this website up the first time like did it take like okay I did it the first time and it just looked terrible and the copy was all weird like how many times did it take you before you're like okay I can actually put this out I think um well like a hundred and then I never got to something that was good because the problem is yeah the problem is that you you end up breaking the design you end up breaking the template right because if you really start to go back to the copy then you realize that the copy that you want isn't going to fit within the design that you have so

3:52you're trying to change and tweak the design that you have which ends up making it look worse and then you kind of keep going round and around and around in circles because now your copy isn't that good and your design isn't that good and that's when even buy like you end up with a site that you're not happy with um because just going through that process ends up making both your copy and your design worse got yeah yeah I think that the um coming at it from a designer perspective I had tried for a long time to the thing that I'm always concerned about is is this going to be helpful in making that buying decision a lot easier and what I noticed as I was communicating with designers and trying to design sites for

4:40clients but then then not knowing what kind of content they wanted to put on there and how to structure it so that they could communicate all everything that was necessary for someone who had never heard about their product to either convert in some capacity like buying it or maybe taking taking a sign up for a newsletter anything was a a point of action that they weren't really good at organizing the content in a selling Manner and the way that I first heard about this was actually from Donald Miller um Donald Miller has a book called I think it's marketing Made Simple it's either marketing Made Simple or business made simple one of the two and he goes through putting his story Rand architecture of you need like in order

5:22for somebody to understand what you do they have to understand how it fits into their life and specifically how it helps them solve a problem so then I started taking that framework of problem solution steps to or problem steps necessary to uh enact a solution proof that this solution is viable and those are really the big the main things and then I saw the way that Corey articulated it taking a lot of inspiration from things like uh those really janky commercials of like hey you don't know how to crack you don't know how to crack an egg here's an egg cracker for you and if you look at those commercials it's always like specifically with the with the egg one you have someone who is violently

6:04smashing an egg on a frying pan obviously over the top and OV exaggerated but it helps you understand like yeah you know I really do have a hard time cracking eggs and I have to do that on a daily basis so if there was some way that I could fix this it'd be really fantastic and that's the point of your website it's to help them understand their problem articulate why your service or product is a solution to that problem the steps to the solution and then proof of that solution's viability with things like case studies social proof um and then other tangential information that really just expands upon those core tenants uh and it's it's the centrifuge of all your marketing efforts now like if someone's going to make a purchase

6:47decision they're going to go to your website to do that most likely with the exception of people who have like you know square or card or point of sale elements but we work with SAS companies and that isn't going to happen I was gonna ask because um so I came from some real estate somewhat in the background of my career and um the idea that like your website is your number one marketing asset is it's definitely true in all the industries that we generally work with and most of our clients you know that is the truth um but in a lot of other Industries that's not really the case will that catch up is that like just like a time thing where it's like okay if you're a realtor you know your referrals are your

7:30number one marketing asset um is it just a matter of time before other Industries everything is like no everyone goes to their website to get the thing about the stuff and press the button yeah I mean I think so we see it more and more just with like uh market share and volume of e-commerce transactions versus you know retail in-person transactions that's why Amazon stock keeps going up that's why Shopify stock keeps going up that's why everybody keeps in in more and more into advertising into their websites into um just Marketing in general right uh especially online digital marketing I hate using the word online marketing digital marketing it's just to me you know everything I do is pretty much

8:14online and digital so it feels uh kind of redundant but to your point um the world is definitely becoming more and more uh online more and more digital first um but as a Counterpoint to that too or not really a Counterpoint but as another interesting thought just off of that is that you'd be surprised still how many people who are completely reliant on their website to make sales don't put any effort or thought into their website whatsoever like it's a total afterthought it's number one driver of Revenue and they're just like whatever it's working it's literally the most important thing you can do in order to be successful with your business and people will spend two or three years just building their product in a

9:02basement you know putting a lot of time energy thought craftsmanship into their product and then they'll be like hm what you know $10 WordPress template can I buy and then let me spend 30 minutes to fill out this copy and replace what they already have in there so that I can get this live and on online and like that's just not going to cut it I'm sorry but it's crazy to me that people think that they can just put so little time and effort into something like their website it' be it'd be the equivalent of like you know you want to manufacture and sell um really high-end luxury bags and you go and buy the equivalent of a lemonade stand to sell them like how are you going to expect people to find you

9:48to to buy from you to trust you it just doesn't look great right you're not going to have the right copy you're not going to have the right design um and this is that balance of copy and design it's not just about copy versus design what we're talking about is copy first versus design first more of a process thing you obviously need both of those but the reason why you start with copy is because the most important thing is the message it's the words it's the things that you say and we know this from those old commercials that you mentioned where people are selling really crappy products but they're selling them really well and they're selling a lot of those crappy products because they they have really good

10:30marketing because they have a really good message because they have really good copy and I also seen this online too it's not just about like old school commercials um and this is where I started to incorporate a lot of these messaging and copyrighting Frameworks into our processes for SAS companies because I would see these really old school sales letters online um you know where it's literally like a giant wall of text it is a letter sometimes these Pages would be thousands of of words long selling something like you know in really sketchy Industries or selling really questionable products but they're selling like hot cakes even though the pages themselves the website looks so incredibly ugly but the opposite isn't

11:18necessarily true if you have a really really nice looking well-designed website but people don't understand what you sell it's never going to sell yeah I think that that's the that's the reason why design first approach fails is people who come at this from a design first perspective they haven't followed the headwaters appropriately what what is it that you are designing you know you are designing words at mainly specifically on a website and then accompanying Graphics to support those words so if you screw the words up then everything else is going to have a trickle down effect and this is one of the reasons why I think that you Cory mentioned the templates and when you have those templates you're

11:59trying to retrofit like a new and improved copy into a template that isn't made for it it's like trying to take a new like a Tesla battery engine and put it into a 1960s pickup truck it's not going to work because it's not made for it but if you start with copy then you have a way better starting point and the headwaters aren't going to be polluted by a bunch of garbage uh so that's the biggest reason why I see design first failing because they don't start where they need to so as a designer Zack have you ever come across where you're like okay I got this you know I got this you know I design this feature page or homepage or whatever it is and you get the copy and you're like I don't want like this isn't going

12:50to make I have an I have a vision already and it doesn't fit into my vision and kind of bothers you do you have any of that or has that happened much recently well I'm kind of biased now because um I mean I read marketing Made Simple in I read it before 2020 because I read it before covid so I was I was already applying those principles um and I have been for the past five years or so and since started conversion Factory I've never had bad copy because all of it has come from Cory so that's right well I I didn't mean bad I just meant like your vision it didn't hit already with the vision that you had lying dormant in your head for the client uh not really like I yeah well what's your experience been like with like past

13:39freelance gigs right where like someone's like hey here's the copy and you're just like okay I'll just got to run with this well actually I started writing copy for clients pretty early in my career right yeah yeah yeah because I was like this is so bad it would be it was like they were they were trying to be apple but they didn't have the clout and the the knowledge to to be apple you know like you you can only get get away with those one like two-word sentence quips that work if you have a multi-billion dollar brand that has so much material built on top of it that you don't have to inform people about who you are and what you do and why they should trust you they just do because they know exactly who you are and

14:27because you are the gold standard for your product so that's what I had seen before is it was a lot of people trying to take these Big Brand tactics and then apply that to their copywriting but that didn't do a good job of selling something that wasn't common place in the market like especially if you're trying to sell a new and Innovative product that people don't even fully understand the problem that it solves yet then you run into a lot of problems because no one understands how you fit into their life and I think that that was the big the big issue is that it was it was a very vague language that was the only kind of things that I could design that would help communicate those were abstract visuals that didn't

15:11support and further communicate the importance of this product yeah can I tell you an anecdote about Apple quickly yeah go ahead so it's it's it's actually great I love that you brought up Apple because Apple really is what a lot of people aspire to both on the copy and the design aspect which is interesting because most of the time it's one or the other and most of the time people mainly care about the design more you know they they care more about like having a really cool brand and logo and colors and they want things to look really good even if the substance isn't great which again is another reason why people usually uh gravitate more towards a design first process by default which is not great

15:58but Apple's a great case this too because these quippy short little phrases that Apple's become known for weren't just by accident in fact the think different tagline wasn't their original tagline and it sort of became what they were known for and started dictating a lot of their marketing strategy and copyrighting strategy because the think different campaign was so successful in helping them build market share because at one point Apple was the Challenger everybody had PCS everybody had Microsoft everybody was um was used to I mean not even just Microsoft and PC but just in general it was like apple was not the standard for a PC right and so they needed to figure out a way to attract contrarians and innovators and

16:50early adopters and people who were interested in something that wasn't the standard so they came with the tagline think different because people who think differently would resonate with that message right and then they be that sort of became the deao thing and I think the meaning actually has changed a lot over time because ironically apple is still the standard now and everybody agrees that apple is way cooler than Microsoft or any other PC but we still think different it's like no you don't it's just sort of this is what yeah this roll is totally flipped yeah yeah that's the that's the power of design and branding right there is that it will make you think things that aren't true yeah yes

17:31absolutely it becomes like a cult and you just start agreeing with things that you don't even know the meaning of what was their original tagline do you know oh I don't know uh before think different I mean I feel like they didn't really have one the closest thing that I could think of is because think different came from the um the black and white video campaign the here the rebels or here The Crazy Ones the Outcast the Rebels the you know where they had all these beautiful shots of Einstein Picasso Thomas Edison Amilia aart like you know the the rebels who thought differently and the only thing that comes close to that as far as their marketing path would be the 1984 Campaign which was that 1984 will not be

18:181984 um but this was before this was before like the I feel like this was before taglines were kind of solidified as a a non changeable asset you know like kind of just like this is our think different commercial it was like the another one and I mean you can think of and that's not even really like their core tag one anymore because I hardly see it used anywhere it's just the the most famous one the only one that I could think of that hasn't changed for the longest time is McDonald's which is the I'm loving it it's I'm loving it actually s m or um probably Nike uh just do it but anyway the point being also added on much later by the way how is it like tell decade wise where where does that fit

19:13in man I read shoe dog so I should know this but I have a terrible memory but I know that there's like a whole chapter where think different or I'm sorry where just do it is introduced and that helps the company's trajectory this could be a whole thing we should do some more research on taglines um I don't know when exactly it was but also just to to cite my sources here the original tagline for Apple was the power to be your best and then in 1997 that's when they introduced think different and that's been their most successful uh campaign and use of a tagline since then yeah I mean but by 1997 though they were pretty like they were yeah more than a startup you know they had they were doing millions and millions of dollars

20:00in Revenue they were not performing very well at that point because think Steve Jobs had just come back um and then cut everything still yeah apple was struggling a lot still yeah we have deviated quite a bit from the copy first point being that quippy quippy copy doesn't fit when you're in the context of brands that we are working with which is I have a problem to solve how can you help me solve it and educate somebody as to why your solution is beneficial so there's one one analogy in here that Cory had written down which I find I find absolutely fascinating and perfect the chef's kiss um it it is a chef's kiss one especially given the current climate around these films um starting with design is like making a Marvel

20:49movie in the last couple years where you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on special effects but the plot and story is garbage so how does how does a copy first approach a fix Marvel so we can get paid millions of dollars to now write their stories for them U but then also how does it fix the why is it better than design first yeah I mean the the base ingredient here is the story and like you mentioned earlier with building a story brand and all the other examples of like just the way that people um understand things people communicate through stories and stories is stories are a journey from point A to point B and when you're trying to sell something to somebody you're trying to tell them a

21:39story about how they can go from their point a to wherever they want to go wherever their point B is and so your laning page and your copy should reflect that Journey that you want to take help them go through you don't take them on that Journey you it's not a you know you aren't the journey you are giving them the magic pill the magic bean the um the the bridge the superpower they need exactly the lightsaber um the force sensitivity they need in order to go from point A to point B right um and there's always a logical flow to it right so I'm not going to talk about all the ingredients because there's a lot of different Frameworks and ideas for that but the point is that there is a logical flow for how people understand how you

22:30can help them get from their point A to point B and wherever they want to go and it's all dependent on the copy and the message and then the way that you package up that copy and that message is what I would consider to be the the design you know and the presentation of that information um but the order of the way that you tell that story matters how much information is in each one of those components of that story matters just just like what we were talking about before with Lord of the Rings versus Star Wars um the story matters a ton and there's so many different elements to the story in the same way there's so many different elements to copy that you have to be very meticulous about each one each of the components

23:15within your copywriting so that when you do package it up with the design it's something that has legs and and it's going to sell I feel like I've been uh hash bless because I work with you guys who are like on the same page with this like I can imagine a world where there's a a designer who thinks design first design first design first and then the copywriter who thinks is copy first copy first but I feel like the it seems like this that design is meant when it comes to building landing pages and websites that the design is it fits so much better at second going second like it feels like Okay this not only is it that you know they can have fun and make the design beautiful and do all this stuff

24:04but they also have these parameters that they're like hey you have to stay in these guidelines and these guidelines are the site the copy is the site like the guidelines that they've been written already are are there to basically like bumpers to keep you so that you can roll all the way down and hit the pins at the end um but I I am glad that you guys are in agreement because it would be really bad if you were sorry Zach you were going to say something well I think that that's I would say there's two kinds of design that we need to consider here like there's capital D design which is just the the creation of anything with intention and then there's lowercase D design which is the the practice of

24:45making things look aesthetically pleasing and design like if if you want to be a real designer like capital D design you should consider the architecture of a website and what it's supposed to to do so that its function doesn't get altered and ruined by its form and form comes secondary that's where I think that the real the real issue is is that people have this idea for like a gorgeous template or a gorgeous hero section and it when the copy doesn't fit that template the way that they have designed it then you run into issues but they're over they're missing the point which is a higher calling of you know a true design and architecture I can think of I mean there is some stuff that comes to mind where

25:33there there wasn't necessarily push back but um maybe it's things where like I'm thinking of scenarios where like we've had to include a lot of different material into a hero section and I've suggested things to Cory like hey have we considered you know maybe doing this we could include a testimonial here or you know maybe we have like seven seven to 10 logos that we want to show and instead of having a logo pool you know we'll put those up in the the hero instead and we can have them scroll across but I'm I'm not like taking away the content because I feel like the message is still important and the the trick with design is to work the copy and the content in a way that still feels branded that still feels like it

26:21has good hierarchy good flow there's good Rhythm and that the graphics that you're creating alongside the copy are supporting the the core message uh but I'm I think that's that is true design is can you work with this copy and be very creative in the way that you display it so that all the information is arranged in a way that helps tell the story and move that person from point A to point B so they're ready to make a purchase decision I like that distinction between capital D design and lowercase D design and I think you could make an argument that copywriting is actually capital D design choosing what information should be here and what the order is and um creating something with intention right

27:04it's it's thinking through what do I need to say and how do I need to present this information in order to get a sale right that really is capital D design yeah I should change my title from well I shouldn't change my title people who are so focused on aesthetic should change their title to like landing page aesthetician yeah instead of instead of uh designer yeah you do want to be a designer I feel like you need to accept that higher calling which is capital D design true design and crafting with intention so I'm a true designer then as I'm the real designer here whoa whoa whoa hey man oh jeez do this I could yeah we don't need to do this right now I'll see you on the M Cory oh they're gonna fight over

27:57it uh uh I do want to bring this up because I think that it's a it's a topic that I've seen like on YouTube and or on LinkedIn where people always say like and I hear this from marketers and I know they're just doing it because it's clickbait and the only reason they're writing it is to piss designers off because designers are the most vocal people when they see stuff like this which is what converts best is ugly and I want to unpack that because I think that this is It's a load of bll [Laughter] because it doesn't have to be ugly it's the uh and you see this all the time like they'll intentionally make good content arranged poorly but the flip side is that they arrange bad content nicely but you can still arrange good

28:49content in a nice way too and there's no reason that what converts best is ugly it's not ugly by choice I think that what has happened you have good content that is not arranged appropriately and this is one of the big reasons why um why I wanted to work with someone like Corey was because it's like I know how to arrange the like things that are said well in a good way that still honors design and it doesn't make me feel like the bastard child of my industry uh but someone who can also appreciate aesthetic and like give me good words to a range and good supporting content to actually give this thing Wings Cory what do you think about that little quip that you wrote yeah I think um maybe we can split

29:41this out into capital u ugly and lowercase U ugly because one I think of um what converts best is ugly quote unquote is sometimes what I mean is um it wouldn't be your first choice for how you would choose to arrange or or display something and so you might think like oh that's ugly because if I really had my brothers I would do it differently but sometimes you do need to pack a lot of information in so that it's a little bit more um it's all together right or it's a little bit more cluttered or there isn't as much white space as you would choose or um you know it's just maybe not your first choice right uh what was that uppercase uh was that capital you so whatever the opposite is lowercase ugly

30:31is like this actually looks bad and I definitely don't think that things need to or should look bad in fact I really hate when people reference like oh you know craigslist.com looks super ugly and it makes a billion dollars a year or whatever I'm like cool that's probably the exception to the rule versus the rule itself yeah and if you really are like trying to make something ugly that just feels so uh nonsensical to me um because I do actually think that making things um beautiful designed well uh you know aesthetically pleasing actually helps um feel like we have some stats somewhere but like good design especially nowadays um correlates really really high with trust and with perceived value and quality and I think

31:24you you could especially take this rule Breck and this kind of rule of thumb to the world of like e-commerce and Retail products because you'll almost never see a premium tier product that is ugly or presented in in an ugly way I mean think about anything luxury or think about anything that people would would consider to be like Top Value or um you know a premium type of product or service and it's almost never ugly sure you can get away with something being ugly and maybe sometimes something being a little bit ugly can be like a zig other zag strategy where it just stands out and that can work a little bit but I don't think it's like a strategy you know you could like purposely make something ugly it's crazy and that

32:13eventually becomes in the eye of the beholder you know like cuz for a while you can look at things like the luxury Brands like Balenciaga or uh Prada or bbery and some of the stuff they create now is like I don't know if I want to wear that um mhm you know that's and but like you said that's more of a zag strategy compared to the like is it actually ugly or is it trying to be aesthetically pleasing by not being aesthetically pleasing by being trendy and fattish you know like and I think that that's one of the one of the things that people get hung up on as well it's like yeah but ugly like is super popular now it's like sort of like we should we'll talk about Trends versus fads at some other some other point

32:58yeah um I think it's settled I think copy first wins right I mean we're all in agreement I think so can I add one more anecdote to that just as another quick story is uh you mentioned earlier about like well we were asking Zach about like experiences with you know people presenting bad copy them having to design it I've had a couple of instances where designers come to me with a really good design that I have to then write copy for and that's also really difficult and the first couple times I didn't really think very much of it because I was like oh like again this is easier or this should be easier because now fill in the blank you I have something to work within it's just a mad live Fillin the

33:40blank right um but then you end up just overthinking everything and yet making headlin shorter in order to fit the design and you think like okay this only allots for one sentence but really I want to say two or I need three sentences and only allots one or you know just the information that you need to display isn't or the layout you need to display the information you want to convey isn't available which is frustrating um and one of the last times that this happened uh I was very much in the camp of like copy first by this point but um I had in a in a backlog a project to redo the homepage and me thinking copy first thought okay well I'm just going to write the copy when I get to that and then I'll hand it off to our designer

34:30well the designer saw it in the backlog and he thought huh I got some room on my plate I'll just start designing it right now so he started redesigning the homepage without me knowing and then came back to me I was like hey I have this done and I was like oh wait um no so that's not how we're going to do things uh and then his feelings were hurt because he thought I didn't like the design but it was more that I didn't that's not the process that I wanted to go through and that it was too hard for me to think through how to make copy that I haven't written yet fit into this new design and layout that he had created and so anyways it became this big um this big issue and it was fine I mean like we were totally cool by the

35:15end of it but those types of miscommunications were are really hard and very counterproductive too because just in my experience I don't think there's been one time where writing the copy first has led to a lot of back and forth between the design where we're like ah this just doesn't work and like this is hard to work but it's almost every single time I've tried to do design first and then copy later that it's like ah we got to go back to the drawing board because this isn't going to work and this isn't going to fit and we got to redo this and this and this and this if you have to just do it together as well cuz then you can do things like there's there's a very happy medium here where art and copy sit in the same room

35:58and then wireframe out the page together and approach it from a very low Fidelity perspective where there's not a ton of overinvestment and then you're both aligned and then you can be far more effective which we've done a couple times but I mean Cory writes copy so fast that it's like it it makes sense to just have him do it and then make the words that he writes look beautiful or you can just be me and not write any copy or do any design and you just put it in the web flow put it in the website which is and you get all the credit yeah I'm like your sight's live I get the big reveal at the end where I push the lme button that's great yeah um Nick has Nick has the Baton at the end I do yeah I get to run through the the checker

36:43flag or something something like that um okay well I think that wraps it up um I'm glad that we're on the same page it means more uh more button clicks for the clients and things like that so um great conversation uh next week we will be talking about Hunger Games versus some other terrible teen story out of Twilight maybe or something no I'm just kidding b or sci-fi yeah there we go um but yeah any final words I don't think so I think we settled it and uh if anyone else has any questions or comments on this we're all yours but we're probably not going to change our minds smash the like button send this to 10 friends or else you'll you'll go to hell or something for the rest of your life yeah okay sweet all right well

37:37we're signing off and we will see you next time on the factory floor done [Music]