“Understandability” in Network Marketing

By Cameron Moll
January 30, 2004

Understandability can either assist or challenge new prospects in gaining a clear understanding of your products and business opportunity. But do you know what ‘understandability’ is? And more importantly, what it means for network marketing?

How a Shiny Thermos® Mug Led to this Article

So the other day I’m playing a game of scavenger hunt with the rest of the management team. Our group ends up winning. We rejoice. We lunch together. And then the awards ceremony begins.

Well, it was actually more of a “thanks for participating in this team-building activity” ceremony. Nonetheless, each member of our team walked away with a brand spankin’ new, top-of-the-line Thermos Nissan™ mug, complete with a five-year warranty and shiny, stainless steel casing.

With newly acquired Thermos mug in hand, I glanced down at the packaging and saw this photo:

“Amazing!” I thought, as I first saw it. Using an ingenious visual metaphor, Thermos managed to capture a full paragraph of advertising copy and the experience of keeping a beverage piping hot even in the harshest conditions—all using a single, convincing, understandable photograph.

And that’s where the conceptualization of this article began.

And here’s where this article relates to network marketing: Just as the photograph above assists potential buyers in understanding how effective Thermos mugs really are, your product photography, marketing collateral, and advertising copy can play a crucial role in helping new prospects understand what it is your company offers. Understandability is the measure of how readily these elements are understood.

What is Understandability?

By now the question begs to be answered: What exactly is understandability? Let me offer a definition that I hope is both unambiguous and applicable to the industry:

• Understandability is a function of 1) the speed and 2) the ease with which the meaning of a visual element becomes clearer to those who view it, whether prospects, customers, or distributors.

‘Speed’ generally lends itself to brevity and simplification, but that isn’t always the case with ‘ease’. Therefore, following are two approaches for increasing the understandability of your company and its product and business offerings.

Approach #1: More Simple = More Understandable

Naturally, common sense encourages one to think that as visual elements become more simple, they also become more understandable. Although this theory doesn’t always hold true (see approach #2 below), it’s usually valid in more cases than not.

Gerry McGovern, a master at making Web content understandable, cites this unprecedented example:

• “In 1998, a group of Fortune magazine editors spent 45 minutes debating the ‘cover line’ for the magazine’s annual retirement guide. They came up with a two-word headline that drove sales up an incredible 51 percent, making it the most popular issue in the magazine’s 70-year history and increasing revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars: RETIRE RICH.”

Are your advertising headlines as simple and as understandable as the Fortune cover line? Do your lifestyle and supplementary product photos lend to as quick understanding as the Thermos photo?

Switching gears, consider compensation plans for a moment. Perhaps one of the most confusing practices for new prospects, compensation plans are often too complex to understand for first-time viewers. The art of simplicity, at least for the sake of first-time viewing, can aid in achieving greater understandability.

Consider Herbalife’s simplified compensation statement. Although insufficient for explaining the entire compensatory structure once a prospect is fully interested, this abbreviated statement is perfect for those hearing Herbalife’s business opportunity for the first time.

Approach #2: More Simple = Less Understandable

Having argued for simplicity, allow me to play devil’s advocate and shift to arguing for verboseness. To do so convincingly, let’s examine a few examples.

Imagine you’re on a healthcare provider’s website. Imagine you see a tab that says ‘Plan’. The problem you quickly encounter is that ‘plan’ is both a noun and a verb. So you immediately ask yourself,

• Will I be shown the provider’s healthcare plan (n.) if I click the tab?
• Or will I be taken to a page on which I can find tips for planning (v.) health-enhancement activities such as exercise and nutritious eating?

Closer to home, now imagine you’re on your company website. Ignoring what you already know about the network marketing industry, put yourself in the shoes of someone new to the industry; someone who has just heard of your company’s product offering through one of your distributors. You visit your company website (or the distributor’s website). You see a tab that says ‘Opportunity’. Are you confused by the term?

To those of us involved in network marketing, the term ‘Opportunity’ is generally understood to mean business opportunity. But is it clear, e.g. understandable, to those not familiar with network marketing lingo?

Arbonne International doesn’t think so. Despite the term’s brevity, it may be not immediately understandable to network marketing “noobies,” so to speak. Instead, Arbonne prefers the phrase ‘Be Your Own Boss’ as shown below:

Too bold for other companies to do the same? Perhaps. Yet, more readily understandable than ‘Opportunity’? Definitely.

So What’s Your Point, Cameron?

My point is simply this: Both approaches work, dependent upon the visual element and the context in which it appears. The key, however, is discovering which approach produces the greatest level of understandability for each situation. By increasing understandability, prospects win because they gain a clearer understanding of your products and business opportunity. And you win, quite frankly, because you win new prospects you might not have otherwise won.

Understandability is a vital influence in how we develop features for ARRAY Express. Realizing your distributors’ time is limited and their knowledge of the Internet varies widely, we strive to make each feature, photograph, and headline as understandable as possible.

So go out and get yourself a Thermos mug, enjoy a hot beverage, and ponder ways to increase the understandability of your company.

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Cameron Moll is the creative director for Internet Development Inc (IDI), developers of ARRAY Express. You can reach him at cameron@idiglobal.com.