Sell More: Cut the Ho-Hum Corporate Speak in Web Content

October 10, 2024May 25, 2010 by Meryl Evans

Woot knows how to entertain us with its content. The company — located within a couple of miles from me (!!!) — sells one product per day. Every product comes with smile-inducing descriptions. Since then, the company has added Woot-Offs! (selling one product until it runs out of stock, then selling another product, repeat until it feels like stopping or servers crash when it offers the Bag of Crap), Wine Woot, Shirt Woot, Kid Woot and deals. Even its newsletter cracks me up.
Humor + Products = Impulse Purchases
And it works. I bought a couple of things that I should not have — and I take care to shop for needed items… most of the time. How can you resist a company that puts the following on its about page:

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it’s taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 – by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we’re still the lovable scamps we’ve always been.

I look forward to its Woot-Offs even though it could mean making poor decisions. Good news, I’ve gotten better about what I buy. In fact, I don’t think I’ve bought a Woot-Off item in the last few runs. (Woot-Off happening now and so far, I’ve been a good girl.) Its FAQ explains the flashy thingy happening:

I see some orange flashing lights on the main page – what do they mean?

No, you aren’t seeing a side effect from your allergy medication. You have found a Woot-Off, a short term frenzied mutation of our product posting procedure.

Can You Guess What 6dollarshirts Sells?
I need to hush up about Woot already. It gets enough attention and I don’t want to turn it into a spoiled brat. Besides, some other children deserve attention, too. An shipment notification email from 6dollarshirts compelled me to write this. A bit from the email:

Our amazing staff has inspected your order and even contemplated stealing it since you have such FABULOUS taste in design and color combination… <3

Our shipping specialist lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as she so gently packaged and so carefully placed the shipping label containing the following request from the ever-so-talented ThreadPit Crew…

Ooh, chills. There’s more…
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards, and the whole crew marched down the street to the post office, where the entire town of Gainesville, Fl waved “BON VOYAGE!” to your package, already on its way to you.
We also want you to practice precautions while waiting on the arrival of your order. Please keep this in mind: Strange, unexplainable things will happen when you wear our shirts. You will no longer feel the urge to rob old ladies. If you’re bald, your hair will grow back. Random members of the opposite sex will come up to you and start “grinding ‘dat [bleep]”. Most importantly, your friends and family will start laughing with you instead of at you. I hate it when that happens.
In the last newsletter, Woot bragged… err … mentioned an article by 37signal’s Jason Fried (I’ve had the pleasure of attending his presentation and meeting him in person) about awful business writing. Jason mentions Saddleback Leather and Polyface Farm, so you know where to go for more captivating content inspiration.
What other business websites charm you with its content?

2 thoughts on “Sell More: Cut the Ho-Hum Corporate Speak in Web Content”

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Meryl

May 25, 2010 at 3:36 pm

I cursed myself… I brag about not buying a woot-off item… and what did I do? Went off and bought an Nevermore shirt in today’s Woot Off.
Oh, and I meant to mention ThinkGeek.com as another company that has a good time with geeky stuff. Ohh… Must. Close. Browser.

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