Tony Nicholls
Some say that getting the sale is the easy part, but we think that embedding the product is often the harder part. What do you do when you get a community which has purchased your product to actually use it? This is often the most difficult part of embedding customers in business. Many people often download a technology solution, but then never go on to use it.
In 2012 we undertook a series of focus groups to look into how the language of technology products can have an effect on how they are used and looking at the pain points that businesses face and how to overcome the barriers that stop customers from engaging with your products.
The Language You Use in Technology is Important
Before we talk about that though, language is so easily identifiable by all the major brands as barriers to success, why do you think Apple is so successful (ok it is a great product… but the name isn’t scary). Apple is a common everyday item that people know and are familiar with. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been anywhere nearly as successful had it been called the FiTaTAC700.
Anyway, so back to our company. Our research showed that when creating a collaboration product (such as our company Engage), the language that was used had a huge impact on whether they engaged with the product or not. Using emotional language resonates with people more than technical language and therefore is more likely that people will engage with a product when it is made to appear simple and straightforward and eliminating the pain points that small to medium businesses are experiencing.
The research consisted of a range of small businesses, involving Business Owners, IT Managers, IT Managers, Office Managers, Operations Managers and Project Managers. The focus group tested two propositions: technical and emotional. The emotional terms outranked the technical terms 70% to 30%.
The language that you use can have a huge impact on bridging the gap between on-boarding and not when it comes to technology. Our research found that the most popular words were ‘easy, collaboration, communication and sharing’ all simple and non-scary words. With new technology coming in, people can often be scared or nervous about using it, but by using these emotive and friendly words the take-up of products can be much greater.
This is the main reason for using ‘Engage’ in our collaboration tool ‘our company Engage’ by using this friendly ‘engaging’ term rather than our company One Click Collaboration tool allows people to imagine themselves using the service and therefore the fear of interacting with the product is removed.
Naming a product, especially in technology is so important and can have a huge impact on the success or failure of a product, so remember that when thinking about your next big idea. People want to resonate with it and adopt it into their life.
Shaz Manelli
