Ouch! The CIA’s website is better than mine.
Twitter’s aflutter with the CIA’s website design reboot. But we can’t stop checking out the copy.
Waterboarding and rendition sites. Assassination and propaganda. Operation Mongoose! All in a day’s work for the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Except now we can add website design and copy to the pretty horrible list of things the CIA does well. Just check out their show-stopping new website.
Covert atrocities aside, I know what you’re thinking. Government websites are supposed to look like Donkey Kong (the original), minus the funky music and backstory. What happened?
Technically, you’re right.
Traditionally, websites designed for US citizens, came with explicit directions for the web developers to make them look like “promising seventh-grade HTML projects” with flagrant disregard for user experience or any kind of cohesive narrative.
The CIA reboot is clearly not that. It looks more like the evil twin sister of Ritual, the online vitamin shop, or Jeff Bridge’s trendsetting 2015 Sleeping Tapes with a fingerprint aesthetic and the absorptive qualities of a black hole.
The truth is, we don’t actually know what happened here. Nobody in the design or copywriting community knows. But in our brave, new, post-truth information economy, where facts must be stressed, let’s just say it for the record: it’s a fact, a very weird and unprecedented fact. The CIA has a kick-ass website.
Which means it’s also a fact, citizen entrepreneur, when you put your website side by side with the CIA’s, no matter what the lighting or how much you squint your eyes, yours looks worse.
Before the CIA revamp, I would definitely say that if you actually made that comparison and your website came out worse than, say, the Department of Transportation’s, you should just hang up your digital hat and pursue a career in Marseilles, farming sardines.
But now I’d say hold your horses.
Yes, the bureaucratic bar for web excellence has just gotten a whole lot higher, making many of our less malevolent websites look like digital chicken coups.
But this is actually a good thing, a motivating thing.
And I’m not only, or even primarily, talking about the new design of www.cia.gov. The design is good. Parts of it are actually cool. (Other parts need a little work. Like the sloppy hover effect on the “Find your calling” button in the homepage banner. Sorry, nameless CIA website designer.)
What most stands out about the spy agency reboot are the words. The CIA has done well in the copy department this time around.
Though it’s a rare day on Twitter when “copywriting trends to look out for” is the talk of the town, I believe good CIA website writing could really be a sea change—not some flavor-of-the-month UX design trend that will go out of fashion before you can say “duotone gradient.”
And as we always do when we see a good thing, we gasp, gawk, and then—in the fine tradition of all artistic advancement—pillage what we can for our own base ends. (Disclaimer: We’d never recommend pillaging anything from the CIA. We use this verb entirely figuratively here.)
So, what did the CIA do right with their copy and what can we, the digital entrepreneurs of the world who don’t kidnap our audiences and interrogate them in caves, learn from it?
1. Make it short and sweet
I kind of feel that putting “short” first is misleading.
Yes, punchy is always good for restless eyes and twitching fingers. But the quality of the message is the key thing, and the CIA has clearly put some thought into their aspirational and emotional tagline: “We are the Nation’s first line of defense.” (Notice the capital “N” in nation and its repeated use a line down.)
Granted, you can almost hear the melancholy whining of a military bugle tugging at your heartstrings as your eyes march down www.cia.gov, but the words are hardly the spontaneous outpouring of sentimental spies. They were carefully chosen to get across key brand points succinctly: nation, all backgrounds and walks of life, calling.
When you put those points together, you get a very clear, very targeted message. The CIA protects the country. Do your duty, young, bright, multi-ethnic person, and help them.
The same message carries through to the following section, “Our Agency” (again, notice the “Our”), where the CIA’s dark, covert roots are cloaked in the no-nonsense copy of a team “what we do” page. As if collecting information from foreign governments and conducting covert operations were just capabilities.
Whether you buy the story or not, the CIA is taking pains to present its brand straightforwardly and cohesively, like all organizations should. They do that with concise, message-driven copy.
2. Know your target audience
I shudder to think who the CIA’s audience actually might be, but judging from their copy, the CIA knows. (And may have already wiretapped their apartments.)
That’s because the copywriters of www.cia.gov spent some time getting to know their potential visitors, something that plenty of companies that haven’t joined the dark side don’t do at all.
The CIA is looking for young people of all genders (well, at least two of them) and ethnicities. Every time you reload the homepage, you see a different face!
Just like other tight-knit families you don’t want to piss off, the CIA is looking for careerists. And they’re looking for government employees who are keen on “policymaking,” not Jason Bourne wannabes. A key distinction to make if you want to differentiate yourself from, say, the US Army, which finds its recruits in Walmart parking lots.
Again, how do I know all of this?
Because the website writers put this particular picture into words.
And, to be perfectly clear about this: it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that their copy, or the design, would turn out this way. “Protecting the nation” could easily have skewed towards Trumpist fear-mongering and exclusion, given the political climate of the rebrand.
The CIA could have decided pink was the new black or that millennials and gen Zers, even the future spooks among them, would respond better to emojis and TikTok challenges.
Could have.
The website took its current form because the CIA made some high-level, brand-wide decisions about its audience on the drawing board. These decisions informed every word and every design choice that made its way onto the finished website.
3. Write it for the user
The most impressive thing about the CIA website, from a writer’s perspective, is simply that it was written for users, not for the CIA.
This might seem like a superfluous thing to point out, but in practice, many company websites don’t make this distinction, and end up talking about themselves to themselves.
It’s an easy trap to fall into.
Business websites are always a tightrope walk between “we” and “you.” Companies want to talk about what they do, naturally. Customers, on the other hand, want to know what they’re getting—quickly and crystal clearly.
The CIA is no exception, and kudos to them for realizing it. There is plenty of “we” on the new website. But it’s also refreshingly user-centric.
For example, even if I don’t personally want to “explore the world-CIA style”—yes, here I think the writers definitely went overboard—if I scroll down to the CIA World Book at the bottom of the homepage, I have a powerful user resource front and center that might extend my visit.
Ditto for the “stories” section, where I can take my mind off Abu Ghraib for a few fun minutes reading about “the CIA’s Top Dog Training Tips.”
These stories and tools might not seem like much, but they’re proof that the CIA writers weren’t writing this website only to showcase the CIA and its achievements, but to engage their visitors, too.
Wrapping up
Is the CIA’s brand story believable? I’ll withhold judgment on that. But the fact that a government website—let alone the CIA—has chosen to focus meaningfully and discernibly on user experience is a huge step forward for copywriter kind.
And so as not to violate our first talking point, I’ll wrap up this journey into the dark side of website copy by saying that the principles guiding the CIA’s digital transformation—nailing your message, knowing your users and building a website for them—are the foundation of any solid user experience.
And, happily, any company can figure them out and apply them to their own website, with a little help from experts.
Because if the CIA, the least straightforward, cohesive entity known to man, can do it, so can you.
Granted, writing stand-out website content isn’t easy. Even if you’re the CIA. If you need help with this critical part of your business strategy, we’d be happy to talk you through it. Just drop us a line.
If you’ve already decided you need new website copy, check out our website writing service. It could be just the thing you’ve been looking for.
