Monday links: Focus on customer needs; cutting friction; content is not medium; small changes with big effects

Some links to start your work week:

• **Focus your copy on what your customers need. **Nathan Berry walks us through his landing page copywriting process and reminds us that our copy should speak to our visitors’ needs and address a pain they have. His suggestion: “First write out the pains, then write out the reversal of those pains (dreams).”
• **No unsupervised thinking on checkout pages. **Graham Charleton explains why you should “enclose the checkout process” and limit the distractions that may keep your users from completing a transaction. That means cutting off the navigation links and other ways your customers can abandon the checkout. This is a great example of eliminating friction.
• **Content is independent of medium. **David Sleight argues that publishers should stop distinguishing between “real” and online content. An online newspaper is just as much a newspaper as one made of ink and paper.
• **Small changes can have big effects. **In a recent test, swapping out a single word on a signup button had a huge effect, David Kirkpatrick explains. The original button said “begin your free 30-day trial.” Amazingly, “changing ‘your’ to ‘my’ resulted in a 90% lift in sign-ups.