I’m sure many people have seen this advertisement from the Wall Street (if not, you’re probably not their target market). It starts out like this:

Dear Reader,

On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college.

They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable, and - as young college graduates are - both were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these men returned to their college for their twenty-fifth reunion…

It goes on to say that one of them read the Wall Street Journal and that man was much more successful than the other man. I recognized the advertisement when I was reading the article but what really amazed me is that the Wall Street Journal has been running this exact same message unchanged, for the past 20 years and it’s always been their most successful advertisement . . . by far. In fact, one person estimated that it made them over $2B since 1974. No matter what they tried to use instead of this, nothing came close to matching the conversion rate of that single piece.

What this simple example shows us is that “Content is King”. There weren’t any flashy graphics or cool looking brochures that worked better. Just a simple, short letter, with no pictures out-performed anything else put up against it.

So when you’re trying to improve your website, don’t look at the web design first - look at the content. Test out different messages until you find out one that works. You could possibly change your design at that point. But beware - I have seen and heard of many different circumstances where a new design that looked much better was less effective than the same website. Sometimes that design takes away from the message.

If you enjoyed this post then make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed.