For sure, if you suggest to the boss that the home page of the site should be written in more natural, searchable style, he or she is going to say no. Too scary.

Here is the cunning plan I have recommended before.

Start with the newsletter.

Say something like this to the boss. “Boss, I’m hearing from various people online that we might achieve better results with a more natural approach to language. I appreciate that we can’t put all our eggs in one basket and make wholesale changes to the site. But what if we tested some changes in our newsletter? Better still, would you allow me to test a different approach to just 1% of our list in the next newsletter? We can test and track the results. If it doesn’t work, we will have done minimal damage. If it does well, we can try it against a larger percentage in the following newsletter.”

In other words, the way to get cautious companies to make changes in language is to proceed with baby steps, test everything you do, and keep the potential damage to a minimum.

If things go well, you can apply what you have learned with the newsletter to pages on your site.

Test, test and keep testing…that way you will have figures to show your boss.

Worth a try?

Best wishes,

Nick Usborne