The Olympic motto is not “Faster, Higher Stronger, And make sure you use a good masking agent”. It’s just “Faster, Higher, Stronger”.

In website copywriting, as in life, good things come in threes

The advertising for the telco 3 says, “Three is a magic number”. And they are absolutely right. People love things to come in threes.

It’s not the holy duopoly: Father and Son. They knew that wouldn’t fly. It’s the Holy Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Who’s the Holy Ghost? No-one. He’s just there to make up the numbers. Or, more specifically, the number. The number 3.

Alexandre Dumas, that wonderful French novelist, wrote a cracking yarn about four swashbuckling heroes – Arthos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan. But did he call it The Four Musketeers? Well, he wanted to. But his publicist said “Are you kidding?”. And the rest is publishing history.

The Olympic motto is not “Faster, Higher Stronger, and make sure you use a good masking agent”. It’s just “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. Three truly is a magic number. But what relevance does this have for website copywriting?

It means that when you’re creating your web copy, you should be looking to harness this magical power of the number 3. Two has no magic – unless you’re planning a candle-lit dinner. And four is only good if you’ve finished that candle-lit dinner and you happen to be Bob, Carol, Ted or Alice.

Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice challenge the omnipotency of the number three.

I’m prompted to remind you of the power of 3 because I was recently asked to rejig a site that had not a 3-step ordering process but a 4-step ordering process. Customers want things to be simple. But a 4-step process doesn’t say simplicity. If it did, we’d all say that things were “as easy as 1-2-3-4″. We’d say it was as easy as “A-B-C-D”. But we don’t, do we? We say they’re “as easy as 1-2-3″. We say it’s as easy as A-B-C. We crave for that magic little number 3.

So, with a little bit of literal re-engineering, voile, suddenly my client had a 3-step ordering process.

Now, you could say, how could you do that? It’s not a 3-step ordering process – it’s a 4-step ordering process. And I’d say – as was drilled into during my time at IBM – “don’t confuse selling with installing”. Your business is as your customers want it to be. And your customers, by an overwhelming majority, want the number 3.

Even Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice – if they were to launch an online business – would by trying to harness the mystical, eternal, magical power of the number 3.