I See Dumb People!

I hate to put it so bluntly, but people are dumber than you think.

No, I’m not some misanthrope (I really do like people)… and yes, there will be a marketing lesson here. So please bear with me for a moment as I present a few seemingly unrelated pieces of information.

In the past few weeks, there’s been a firestorm of controversy about Google Sidewiki.

Those who are against Sidewiki argue that most Internet users will mistakenly assume that the comments on Sidewiki are actually on the “host” web site itself. This naturally opens the door for much misunderstanding and miscommunication.

On the flip side, people who are in favor of Sidewiki say that you’d have to be an idiot not to know the difference between the web site and the Sidewiki… that the difference between the two is patently obvious.

Unfortunately, I think the latter group is overestimating people’s intelligence. I would like to believe that the majority of people are highly educated and blessed with uncommon discernment, but something tells me otherwise.

Which brings me to Twitter…

What You Can Learn from Twitter’s Trending Topics

Twitter measures the popularity of memes and publishes the most popular ones in a column labeled “Trending Topics.” This column is constantly changing as memes come and go.

For instance, just a few days ago, “No God” became a trending topic when (it appears) a well-meaning person tried to get this phrase to become popular: “No God, No Peace. Know God, Know Peace.”

The good intentions backfired… Twitter only picked up “No God” as a trending topic… and the trend fed on itself for the better part of a day.

Anyway, have you ever clicked these trending topics and perused the tweets of strangers? I have often done so out of sheer curiosity, the “No God” meme being a perfect example.

What I’m consistently shocked by is the number of illiterate people using Twitter. When I click on a trending topic, half the time I can’t even understand what people are saying. It’s practically gibberish — even though the majority of these people are native English speakers!

Next time you’re on Twitter, click on one or more of the trending topics and you’ll see what I mean.

But maybe Twitter is not the best place to look for intelligence and is poor evidence that people are lacking in the IQ department. So let me give you another example…

“My Hard Drive Won’t Accept My Credit Card.”

Last week, at my weekly Wednesday morning breakfast, I was reading the back page of Tidbits because there were some humorous anecdotes. One stood out to me as being illustrative of the ignorance that pervades modern society.

A lady was seen at work putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for her credit card number, so she was using the ATM “thingy.”

And in spite of stories like this, are we to believe your average Internet surfer is going to understand Sidewiki and how frames work? Puh-leeze.

Most people think you’re speaking a foreign language when you give a basic instruction like, “Type this URL into your browser bar.”

If a person doesn’t know what a URL is, there is little chance he will even remotely understand Sidewiki, much less how it works.

Lesson: Keep It Simple Stoopid!

Which brings me to the marketing lesson of this post. That is, as much as possible, keep your sales message and ordering process simple.

The simpler they are, the more sales you’ll get.

Use plain language (plainer than what I’ve used in this post). Use a simple checkout process and, if possible, reduce the number of clicks between your sales message and the final checkout page. Never assume that your prospects “should be able to figure it out.”

You must always simplify because most folks on the Internet are not as smart as you are. They don’t understand things like HTML, URLs, frames, cookies, Javascript, plug-ins, etc. Some of them don’t even understand the basics of shopping online.

Are there times when you might want to “upgrade” your language? Certainly. But for most products sold on the Internet, the advice to use plain language holds true. (And a simple ordering process is good no matter who your target market is.)

The fact is, the Internet is crawling with people of average and less-than-average intelligence. This is not something you should be upset about. Rather, I suggest you make peace with stupidity — and even cater to it.

After all, as a marketer, it’s not your job to change the way people are… your job is to meet people where they’re at. And so you work with what you’ve got.

What do you think? Do you agree with my premise, or am I going too far here? Leave a comment below and let me know.

-Ryan M. Healy