Content strategy. Content marketing. SEO. Blogging. Voice and tone. What do all of these eMarketing techniques have in common? They all rely on well-produced written content. In that case, a tool that helps create more and better content would be pretty useful, right? Well, it exists, and it costs $4.99.
Right now, I can’t see anything but the words I’m working with, and the sentence I’m working on is the only one not faded. I’m writing in the full-screen view of iA Writer, a writing-slash-productivity application for Mac, iPad and iPhone. Through excellent user experience design, a focus on simplicity and some clever additions that put it head and shoulders above other text editors, it helps take away other distractions and lets me focus on my writing.
How does it do that? Well, the app focuses solely on content creation. Not formatting. Not appearances. Just creation and editing. In full screen, it takes away everything else on my screen, including the top navigation bar. Not seeing my little Twitter icon light up when there are new tweets in my stream? Priceless.
iA Writer also uses a monospaced font that slows down my reading pace, forcing me to focus more on each word. While in many cases this is the antithesis of usability, it just goes to show you how important the context of the user is, because I love them for this. It’s helped me catch some small typos that would usually go through to the second reading of my content.
Overall, iA Writer won’t please everyone, but if you’re a content creator who works with words, has several things competing for your on-screen attention at any given time and appreciates smart design on a Mac, this app is for you. They’ve designed the perfect app for those people, and speaking as one of them, I’m more than willing to pay the $4.99 for the desktop version, and I likely would have paid more. I also recently purchased the iPad and iPhone version as well, because it’s just that good. This is nothing if not a business case for great user experience, and for understanding your user.
Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, try focusing on your ideal user, and provide them with exactly the design and user experience they’re looking for. If you do that right, there’s a good chance they’ll sing your praises and write blog posts about you. Sounds like great marketing and business to me.
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