Graphic designers can be hazardous to your wealth. Most copywriters worth their salt have had one or more projects ruined. The problem is there are plenty of direct response copywriters, but direct response designers are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Keep in mind this has nothing to do with pretty images. In fact, the more perfect the image looks aesthetically, the worse people seem to be at looking at direct response effectiveness. For direct response graphic design the crucial point is message-to-market match, not pretty.

Suppose you’re a company selling roofing. And you put up the classic cutaway diagram of the roofing system you sell. The site visitor looks it over, and thinks all roofers do about the same thing. So the potential customer leaves your site to go find someone offering a cheaper price.

Expensive Roofing Starts Out Cheap...
Whatever business you’re in, there are competitors which cut corners to bid low. Sometimes, as with roofing, these guys shortcut on materials and workmanship. Other businesses play a shell game, billing you extra for all the things you thought were going to be included in the initial lowball price.

Eventually you pay a lot more than the lowball price. It’s not enough to show what you do in isolation, you have to show what others aren’t doing. Graphic design can help you show customers how your business adds value -- but you have to know how.

One page takes an entire page of text attempting to describe what you’re missing with regular television versus wide screen. Another page actually shows you what gets cut off. Now, if you’re selling wide screen TVs you don’t want to get bogged down describing the technology features.

Graphics can be a shorthand way of explaining technical factors no human should ever have to read through. A picture can save a copywriter from having to break the flow of a letter.

Before and After, Show the Pain
I actually had a graphic designer argue with me on using stock photography of perfect fashion models on a site selling cosmetic procedures. This is wrong on so many levels.

Another eboook cover showed only the fashion model perfect “after” of the wrinkle remover they were trying to sell. Another used a luxury car, perfect in every detail to show how good they were at collision repair.

Try an alternative instead.



Show the value you bring to the table with a before and after picture. Showing the before and after is persuasive where showing the end result is not. Think about it for a minute. You, as the reader of an ad, have no idea whether a small scratch was buffed out of a fender or the collision repair outfit is a miracle worker.

One creates buying resistance, the other eliminates it. And these were people who all thought the graphics they used were just fine ...until I pointed out the alternative.

Visual Merchandising
Graphic designers operate under the assumption any graphic which looks good works for sales. Visual merchandising works under the assumption graphics must be tested just like copy.

A graphic designer might suggest using a picture of the product. A visual merchandiser can offer the alternative of showing the product being used.

A graphic designer might suggest using stock photography of fashion models pretending to be employees. A visual merchandiser can tell you about Wendy, the Snapple Lady. Sales went down when they tried corporate image advertising, and went up when they brought Wendy back.

Wendy doesn’t look like a fashion model, she looks authentic. And authenticity is in short supply with so many copies of PhotoShop out there.

Almost every company, from catalogs to ebooks make the same mistakes. One site was showing miniature ponies. Not one showed the pony against something of known scale. It was literally impossible to see how miniature this animal was. Nobody noticed it until I critiqued the site.

As head-slappingly obvious as it is, I see electronics manufacturers make the same mistakes -- even when the small dimensions are a specific selling point.

Perfect graphics are blinding people to obvious visual merchandising flaws.




Related:

Relevance-Enhanced Image Reduction: Better Thumbnails (scroll down the article) Hard to believe people can't get thumbnails and screen shots right ... and yet they do.

Visual Merchandising And Web Site Catalog Copy Most of the visuals for the article above can be found in my companion piece, it goes far beyond what is hinted at here.

Graphic testimonials Each testimonial ends with a link to the scanned copy of the original print letter, increasing believability.

Why Your Site Doesn't Need to be Pretty is a classic on the difference between the graphic artist and the visual merchandiser. Message-to-market match trumps pretty.

Can your web buttons affect your conversion rate? Well, what do you think?

Apple iPod Shuffle page how small is it? Will you be able to operate it? Amazing how few companies show their products in context, like showing the plug and not the cable. How difficult can it be to take a picture of a cable? ...and still.

Designers should also know. If they don't test like copywriters and don't know what works beyond what looks good, don't hire them.

It's the designer's responsibility to be innovative in a way copywriters find valuable -- not just stay out of the way and do as little damage to sales as possible. Designers should be an asset, not a potential liability you have to watch like a hawk.