Expert Tips For All About UX Writing: The Complete Guide

User Experience writing is a little-known but very important aspect of web design. If users can’t easily find what they’re looking for or don’t understand how to navigate your site, they’ll leave – and you’ll risk losing potential customers.

Despite its importance, many small business owners are unsure of what user experience writing is or how to go about incorporating it into their website. This comprehensive guide will introduce you to the basics of UX writing and show you how to apply it to your own website. With just a few simple changes, you’ll be able to create engaging and user-friendly interfaces that keep your customers coming back for more!

What is UX Writing?

Let’s start off really simple.

• Fundamentally, UX stands for User Experience and is the crux of the whole UX design process.
• UX design is all about the creation and, well, design of a great user experience with a digital product – UX writing serves the same purpose, but instead achieves it with words!
• A UX writer is in charge of planning and composing microcopy for sites, apps, and other digital interfaces to help direct users through the product and have a great time doing it.

The two elements, writing, and design depend on collaboration with each other to achieve their goal of, you guessed it, a great user experience.

What is Microcopy?

The term “microcopy” refers to the bite-sized bits of writing you see all around sites and apps and products. They help a user understand how to navigate an interface, provide information on a situation, direct a user on what to do next, speak to potential user issues, and help express and convey the overall identity of who your brand is, what the product is, and how you do business.

What does a UX Writer do?

A UX writer writes the copy for a product’s interface to guide users on how to use that product. Commonly, UX writers are in charge of writing almost any interaction a user has with the product, such as:

• Navigation buttons
• Push notifications
• Instructions
• Error messages
• Onboarding processes
• Form fields

In some situations, a UX writer is also referred to as a content strategist, though a content strategist is not necessarily a UX writer. While content strategists typically focus on more overarching layouts of information and UX writing is all about concise details, there is an impressive amount of overlap in the skills both require to do the respective job well.

Why does good UX writing matter?

The growth of UX writing has been begun exploding in the past couple of years thanks to recent hard evidence from studies proving how remarkably effective it can be.

A popular example is of a study showing a hotel booking site changing its microcopy from “Book a room” (too decided-sounding and like a commitment, users explained) to “Check availability” (much more approachable and less committed). The site’s engagement jumped by a full 17% with just this one simple change in UX language.

What makes good UX writing?

Good UX writing follows some simple but distinct principles.

• Use simple, familiar terms
• Write in an active voice
• Keep text and characters minimal
• Be clear, direct, and concise
• Speak the user’s language (if your audience is of a particular nationality or of a certain generational demographic, speak in a way that that particular audience will understand)
• Maintain consistent terminology
• Always prioritize empathy for your users 

Funnily enough, the less a user notices UX writing, the better the UX was written.

Is UX writing the same as copywriting?

Well, not quite. Simplistically, the biggest difference between the two is marketing: copywriting is marketing while UX writing is anything but marketing. Yes, UX writers write copy, but the purpose of their copy is to help users use a product rather than to sell that product to the user.

What skills do you need as a UX writer?

Effective UX writers tend to put these skills to use most in their job

• Web Design
• Content Planning and Management
• Consumer Psychology
• Project Management
• Brand and Product Development 

Is UX writing creative?

Considering the bulk of the task is based on verbal problem solving, we’d say it’s definitely creative. if you know how to do it well! It might not call for flowery language, but imagining user scenarios and journeys and how you might help solve the problem before it’s an actual problem for a real user AND solving it all with just language? A role like UX writer is definitely all about creating ways to make a product interface simple and joyous to use! 

UX writing can be a tricky and highly nuanced skill, but with some time and effort, you can be writing engaging copy to help improve your users’ experience with your digital product. Short on time or effort? Let the team at Agency Partner take over the task for you! Contact us today to get started.