Graphic designers can be hazardous to your wealth. Most copywriters worth their salt have had one or more projects ruined by a well intentioned graphic artist or art director.

The problem is there are plenty of direct response copywriters, but direct response designers are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Keep in mind this has nothing to do with pretty images. In fact, the more perfect the image looks aesthetically, the worse people seem to be at looking at direct response effectiveness. For direct response graphic design the crucial point is message-to-market match, not pretty.

Suppose you’re a company selling roofing. And you put up the classic cutaway diagram of the roofing system you sell. The site visitor looks it over, and thinks all roofers do about the same thing. So the potential customer leaves your site to go find someone offering a cheaper price.

Expensive Roofing Starts Out Cheap...
Whatever business you’re in, there are businesses which cut corners to bid low. Sometimes, as with roofing, these guys shortcut on materials and workmanship. Other businesses play a shell game, adding all the things you thought were going to be included in the initial lowball price.

Eventually you pay a lot more than the lowball price. It’s not enough to show what you do in isolation, you have to show what others aren’t doing. Graphic design can help you show customers how your business adds value -- but you have to know how. Instead of showing what you do, show the top mistakes of shortcut low-bid competition.

One site takes an entire page of text to describe what you’re missing with regular television versus wide screen. Another site actually shows you what gets cut off with a simple picture. Now, if you’re selling wide screen TVs you don’t want to get bogged down describing the technology features.

Graphics can be a shorthand way of explaining technical factors no human should ever have to read through. A picture can save a copywriter from having to break the flow of a letter.

Before and After, Show the Pain
I actually had a graphic designer argue with me on using stock photography of perfect fashion models on a site selling cosmetic procedures. This is wrong on so many levels.

Another ebook cover showed only the fashion model perfect “after” of the wrinkle remover they were trying to sell. Another used a luxury car, perfect in every detail to show how good they were at collision repair.

Try an alternative instead.



Show the value you bring to the table with a before and after picture. Think about it for a minute. You, as the reader of an ad, have no idea whether a small scratch was buffed out of a fender or the collision repair outfit is a miracle worker.

One creates buying resistance, the other eliminates it. And these were people who all thought the graphics they used were just fine ...until I pointed out the alternative.

Visual Merchandising
Graphic designers operate under the assumption any graphic which looks good works for sales. Visual merchandising works under the assumption graphics must be tested just like copy.

A graphic designer might suggest using a picture of the product. A visual merchandiser can offer the alternative of showing the product being used.

A graphic designer might suggest using stock photography of fashion models pretending to be employees. A visual merchandiser can tell you about Wendy, the Snapple Lady. Sales went down when they tried corporate image advertising, and went up when they brought Wendy back.

Wendy doesn’t look like a fashion model, she looks authentic. And authenticity is in short supply with so many copies of PhotoShop out there.

Almost ever company, from catalogs to ebooks make the same mistakes. One site was showing miniature ponies. Not one showed the pony against something of known scale. It was literally impossible to see how miniature this animal was. Nobody noticed it until I critiqued the site.

As head-slappingly obvious as it is, I see electronics manufacturers make the same mistakes -- even when the small dimensions are a specific selling point.

Meanwhile, when the iPod shuffle debuted, Apple showed the product next to a pack of gum. That's the difference between thinking like a graphic designer and thinking like a visual merchandiser.

Perfect graphics are blinding people to obvious visual merchandising flaws.

Related Articles:

Relevance-Enhanced Image Reduction: Better Thumbnails (scroll down the article) Hard to believe people can't get thumbnails and screen shots right ... and yet they do.

A Low-Tech Way To Boost Response Micheal Fortin has talked about using graphics to boost response in numerous posts.

Visual Merchandising And Web Site Catalog Copy Most of the visuals for the article above can be found in my companion piece, it goes far beyond what is hinted at here.

Graphic testimonials Each testimonial ends with a link to the scanned copy of the original print letter, increasing believability.

Digital Variable Data Print Boosts DM Response 72% You've heard of personalized text mailings increasing response, what this test determined is graphics and text work well too. (You're all collecting graphics experiments for your files ...right?)

Why Your Site Doesn't Need to be Pretty is a classic on the difference between the graphic artist and the visual merchandiser. Message-to-market match trumps pretty.

Can your web buttons affect your conversion rate? Well, what do you think?

Apple iPod Shuffle page how small is it? Will you be able to operate it? Amazing how few companies show their products in context, like showing the plug and not the cable. How difficult can it be to take a picture of a cable? ...and still.

very interesting! thank you for posting this.

Here's an article Most Viewers Don't Know What They're Missing ...it's long and confusing because it is trying to do in text what should be done with a visual. Yet many business sites make the very same mistake.

And what's worse, Flash designers make this mistake too.

Now check out What Is Widescreen? The point is very few graphics actually support the copy. If you were selling home theater equipment, you would want something which tells the powerful visual story behind your product. TV is, after all, a visual product.

Basically I throw up these articles when I find myself repeating certain points in critiques. And visual literacy -- or lack thereof -- has been topping my list of concepts people fail to grasp.

Just a tad off topic...



Having touched on the subject of direct mail creative, Kurtz immediately emphasizes the significance of settling for nothing less than top-notch copy and design. “We’ve always been committed to the best creative, but over the last 20 years we’ve even committed more money and more resources to making sure that our copywriters and designers are the best in the industry. We don’t cut corners because of one of Benson’s comments to me a long time ago: ‘The best package is the best package.’ The corollary to this is that breakthrough creative can solve a lot of ills. If you’ve got a piece of breakthrough creative, you can get through a lot more tough times than you can with mediocre creative from B copywriters.”

Target Marketing, October 2007 - Direct Marketer of the Year - Brian Kurtz - Boardroom, Inc.

Good point. I think it's easier to recognize pretty than good.

This has been the sticking point with copywriters who trash pretty graphics and cute site designs. Even the article I cite above uses the unfortunate title "Your Site Doesn't Need to be Pretty." The article doesn't show each version, so it's hard to tell.

But I would be surprised if anyone could say there was an unattractive, or unprofessional version out of any of the tests. People just can't pick the winners before the test.

With killer creative, you're looking for the big idea. For example, check out these lego print ads. These are what I would call art direction concept image ads. Rarely do these get tested the way a copy-heavy direct response ad would be.

I read somewhere they gave top copywriters the "Which Ad Pulled Best" test. The experts' track record was around 50%. If the subject instead were direct response graphic design, my guess would be the percentage would be far lower.

In other words, test, and test, and test again.