☀️ [30DC] Day 9 » Don’t Make Them Think

I used to think my ideas just needed more time to ‘simmer’. Turns out they needed a chat with a confused friend.

One of my best mates lives overseas, I see him a few times a year at best.

In 2023, the coaching and mentoring part of my practice was brand new, and on one of his trips to Sydney he asked me about it.

I explained the (then 12 week) training program to him in my own way.

I hadn’t had much practice talking about it out loud, aside from a few calls and emails with potential students, and one landing page I’d built as a starting point.

To me it was clear enough, but this chat made me realise there wasn’t much that human eyes (other than my own) had seen yet.

Being a good friend, he stuck with trying to make sense of it far beyond any potential customer would tolerate.

• Summarising in his own words.
• Comparing it to other things.
• Asking questions and more questions.

I replied with a lot of “sort of, but not quite”… until eventually it landed.

Some of the issues were jargon (I tried to avoid it but it still crept in), some were lacking details, and some of it was simply relevance since he’s not the audience for it.

I brought some of our chat to my later conversations with prospects, which has helped guide the marketing copy I now use.

It’s still not perfect and probably never will be.

But don’t underestimate how valuable a confused friend can be. This chat was in-person, on-the-fly User Testing – I was simply making him think too hard.

…which is an awesome opportunity to (yet again) plug my favourite book of all time “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug (you can read it in a few hours, such a smart book).

Takeaways:

• Keep things simple.
• Don’t make them think.
• Ask a friend to give feedback on your idea or landing page, without giving them any background or context.
• Fill gaps with simple language.

Got no friends? Ask me 🙂

You got this 🤜🤛