🍰 Cake’s Take on Speaking Plainly

Last night, announcements at Euston station warned me to take care while walking around the station because of the recent inclement weather... INCLEMENT weather?!

It got me thinking about the use of plain language (I’m a BIG fan) and while 'inclement' may sound more professional, the data shows us the real value of keeping it simple:

- 80% of people prefer sentences written in plain language and this includes expert users with a high level of specialist knowledge. Also, the more complex the issue, the greater the preference for plain language.

- It can affect business performance in real terms too. Stripping out jargon from product pages led to a 17% increase in completed purchases for one multinational retailer.

The applications are obviously far and wide but in my day to day it’s about making sure that everyone in the room ‘gets it’ without exception. Your insight experience, your closeness to the goals, your level of category knowledge, none of it should matter.

(It works for us at Cake Consulting too, see below for a bit of love we’ve received).

So is your messaging a bit "inclement"? Have a look at your last email, report or proposal and see if you could have made it a little bit simpler.

(*Sources: Christopher Trudeau / Eugene Mischenko)