The phone check

Bryan: A friend gave this to me. It’s Albanian. You mind translating it?

Marko: [translates paper] “Good luck”.

Bryan: You don’t remember me? We spoke on the phone two days ago. I told you I would find you.

• Taken

We do most of our writing from our computers.

Yet we do a huge portion of our online reading on our phones.

Think about your offer and how it’s worded, or better yet, print it out as a PDF, email the copy to yourself, attach the PDF, and look at it on your phone.

Look at it in Gmail, in Outlook, how it looks as a PDF on a small screen…

Its different right?

This is a problem.

You need your copy to be even more legible on a small screen because that’s where most people will read it.

It might your email in a newsletter, it might be someone following on to your sales page, it might be someone visiting your page from social media.

All from a phone.

Like it or not (and I love writing reams and reams of words with lonnnng sentences) you are going to have to prune your wording.

Short sentences are great.

Shorter is even better.

I’ve avoided being techy so far (we are WELL into our book on digital marketing mind you) but in your browser settings, it’s possible to set up your Internet browser to preview what things will look like from a phone.

Its usually in Developer tools (Chrome, Edge) or Develop (Safari) which can be turned on in your browser settings. Then select viewing it through a Samsung or iPhone to see what it can look like.

It’s still important to look at it from a phone though something about holding it and seeing it contextually will help you notice ways you can word it better and pack it with more punch.

Remember before you hit publish - did it pass the phone check?