Borrow My Brain

Lately, some of my favorite e-commerce sites are ones that let you buy products designed by their user community. Threadless is a well-known example that sells t-shirts, and I’ve lately discovered Thumbtack Press, which has a selection of cool prints from a variety of artists. I recently ordered some for my apartment.

The key to making sites selling user-designed products work is having a well-edited selection. This is especially important for any products related to style or design, such as fashion, art or home decorating. If you aren’t a design professional, it’s difficult to weed through the thousands of offerings available. As a customer, I’m relying on either the site’s owners, or the user community, to filter the selection and bubble up the best products. The ones that do this the best are the ones I’ll patronize.

This stands in contrast to sites like Cafe Press, which also offers a marketplace of user-generated designs, but doesn’t really filter or edit them, so there’s an unwieldy number of products to sift through. And it’s why I rarely bother with sites like shopping.com, which dumps thousands of offerings into what amounts to an online bargain bin.

So far, user-designed product sites have been limited to areas like t-shirts, art prints, and handmade goods — items that are cheap to manufacture. But it could be applied in many more areas. Lately, even gadgets are as much about style as functionality. How long until we see a site selling user-designed electronics?

They don’t read. They scan. And they’ll ignore most of what you write.

They may scan the first sentence of your paragraphs.  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Proin venenatis sem. Nulla molestie. Quisque eu tortor vitae justo vestibulum fringilla. Fusce tristique nulla. Praesent bibendum tempor magna. Praesent at sapien.

• There’s too much information thrown at them every day. . Integer tristique erat ut leo. Curabitur ipsum pede, sollicitudin vitae, sagittis vitae, pellentesque eu, metus.
• Most of it’s not important or worthwhile. Aliquam adipiscing, tortor vel dapibus viverra, nunc leo gravida justo, non fringilla ligula nisl id justo. Vestibulum nulla dolor.
• So people scan first, and then decide whether to read in detail. ut quam consequat faucibus. Sed ornare. Proin vehicula. Mauris enim metus, euismod eget, blandit nonummy.
• People read while multitasking, and don’t pay much attention. Aliquam adipiscing, tortor vel dapibus viverra, nunc leo gravida justo, non fringilla ligula nisl id justo. Vestibulum nulla dolor.
• It’s hard to read on a computer screen. Aliquam adipiscing, tortor vel dapibus viverra, nunc leo gravida justo, non fringilla ligula nisl id justo. Vestibulum nulla dolor.

Making Your Text Easy to Scan

• It’s easiest to scan headlines, bold and bullets. Donec ante. Nunc enim. Praesent quis eros vel sem tempus aliquet. Aenean eget orci vitae ipsum porttitor ultricies. Donec ante. Nunc enim. Vestibulum nulla
• Don’t write long paragraphs like this. Quisque eu tortor vitae justo vestibulum fringilla. Fusce tristique nulla. Praesent bibendum tempor magna. Praesent at sapien. Dolor, malesuada id, malesuada ut, mollis in, sapien. Nullam vestibulum rutrum sapien. In auctor ultrices augue. In vestibulum, magna sed fermentum tempus, tellus eros malesuada tellus, eu commodo arcu risus in neque. Donec eget ligula.
• Make sure links stand out and remain underlined. Donec fringilla, ante eu auctor accumsan, libero elit cursus diam, non pharetra justo mi vitae augue. Sed ut libero ut quam Use highlighting for key points. Mauris enim metus, euismod

And finally, assume that most of your text will never be read — it may as well be Latin.