In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about how web copy errors don't really matter.

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Errors Don't Matter

This past summer I put out an edition of this newsletter called "Translated from the Original Japanese", it was about writing copy for search engines.

I'd guess I hadn't had quite enough caffeine as I finished it up and so I penned the following:

As I often say to folks - there are tow ways to double your sales. Double the number of people visiting your sote (traffic) or double the number of people that actually buy your stuff(conversion rate). you should really never look at one of these nimbers without the other, they always work together.

My client Todd Parlee, of Michael Stumpf & Associates, is a very polite guy and I think he put it best when he said:

Great stuff Ross!
Sent it right over to our copywriter.
Just be aware that I noticed there were a few typos toward the bottom of the article.
Don’t want anyone to focus on the misspellings and not the quality of the article.
Maybe this was a test?

But as I said to good friend Todd - no that was not a test, this was in fact an actual emergency and the loud sound you just heard will now be followed by my running away in embarrassment.

No - not really, but that was the piece that went out to you, my wonderful Web Enlightenment subscribers. So that'd be lots of folks observing that I often type too fast and I was raised with spell check - which I also apparently sometimes forget to use. I'm not sure when they will make a spell checker that identifies when I meant two and typed tow or when from comes out as form but the day that exists I am buying it.

Had this happened to an Internet Entrepreneur I can guess what would occur - there would have definitely been a meeting. Or perhaps two - as they further complicated their editing process by adding all sorts of safety checks to make sure this never ever happened again.

But you know what?

A bunch of folks noticed this and they all sent me kind notes like Todd - well, no one is as kind as Todd but they were all polite and reasonable. No one demanded a refund (this is a free newsletter after all) or told me that I now had zero chance of ever working with them.

In fact I actually got hired by one of the folks who pointed out my typo filled mess and he later told me that he thought it was pretty cool that even a "wicked smart geek like you screws up once in a while".

There are lots of variants of this idea when it comes to the web.

• Nothing is Cast in Stone
• Don't Let Perfect Ruin Good Enough
• We Can Always Change the Web

But the bigger point is actually a pretty simple one - on the web copy errors don't really matter, especially compared to genuine voice. The important thing is to make sure that your editing process is reasonable and that it doesn't slow you down too much - web copy is like a fast food restaurant in that there is a minimum standard of quality that must be respected but the real goal is massive amounts of production that is achieved quickly.

My genuine real voice contains typos and typing too fast - and so while I will never go out of my way to purposefully include such errors I won't make big efforts that would slow me down to remove them either, because that would remove the genuine flavor of what I am really like; a somewhat crazy, but usually quite useful, farmer guy web addict geek.

Free Handout

In an ongoing effort to take my own medicine (folks who have done web strategy work with me will know this as a "carrot") I am now giving away a handout on how to calculate your break even customer acquisition cost when people sign up for this newsletter.

This is not as painful as it may sound - this formula will help you make sure that all the Internet advertising you buy is profitable.

As you have already signed up for this newsletter I thought you shouldn't miss out on all the fun, so here is a link to the handout.