Imagine this:
You have fallen in love with a product you saw through an ad on Instagram and decide to make a purchase. So, you move onto the website – a nice and sharp one.
Still, it seems like a long and tough battle to find the product at all. And even worse is the purchase process itself, where errors in your information continue to be reported without specifying where the error is.
After many attempts, you give up. You close the tab and try to search for the same product or an alternative from the competitor.
Good design, graphics, images, and video are all important elements on your website. But you risk it all falling to the ground if you don’t have control over the text on your website. We are not only talking about copywriting, but especially about User Experience Writing – also known as UX writing.
We guide you to what it is and how to write this type of text.
UX-writing – what is it?
UX writing – or User Experience Writing – is the small texts you find on various buttons, help boxes, labels, notifications, messages and so on that are meant to help the user navigate through your website, app, software, etc. It’s about making it as easy and frictionless as possible, so that the user can easily and without having to think too much fulfill his intention with his visit to your site.
Copywriting and UX writing therefore differ from each other. Overall, it can be categorized as follows: Copywriting relates more to marketing, while UX writing relates more to the design of the website.
In short
- Understanding the users makes it easier to target information.
- Short texts and good structure make the page easy to skim.
- Put the action first in the text and make it clear.
- Be specific to avoid confusion.
- Beware of humor in repetitive messages.
Let’s jump into it.
How to get started
Mastering UX writing is no easy discipline. Fortunately, we have a few tips that can help you get started.
Understand the users
Before you start writing your texts, you need to understand the behavior of the users on your website. Which platforms do they use, which pages do they visit, how did they get to the page, what is their intent on the page, where are they going, etc. By understanding their behavior, it becomes easier to provide the right information in the right places.
In addition, knowing the users also gives you the opportunity to better target the texts to their interests and engagement.
It should be easy to skim
Users want to get from A to B quickly. Therefore, they usually scan the texts they encounter instead of close reading. Help the reader by writing short messages. It is easy to end up writing too much and writing too long. When it comes to UX writing, it’s all about writing concisely without losing the meaning. In many places you can easily cut out a few words without it going beyond the meaning of the text.
Eg.:
To be able to read the article, you must first log in
Can be cut down to:
Log in to read the article
In addition, you must also ensure that the structure is easy to read with bullets, headings, subheadings, spaces between the lines and division into sections – make them as scannable and navigable as possible.
Put the action first and make it clear
When you write texts, you should start the text with what the user needs to do.
Eg.:
Click here to read the article.
Instead of…
Read the article by clicking here.
In the first example, the actions come in the logical order. It avoids confusion for the user and makes reading smoother and fluid.
Users must also be in no doubt as to what their click on a button leads to, and therefore the action must be clear. For example, ‘Accept’ can mean many things – it can be many various things that you accept. Therefore, it is better to write ‘Accept Registration’.
If the user does not know where their click leads, you risk them stopping their action and not continuing in skepticism about what the click leads to. The same applies to texts such as “read more” and the like. Spice it up a bit and make them clickable.
Be consistent
At være konsekvent er også af stor Being consistent is also of great importance. There is no point in calling it ‘My Account’ in one place and ‘Your Account’ in other places. Therefore, decide how various things should be referred to, and then keep writing it like that everywhere on your page.
Be careful with humor
It’s great with a sprinkle of humor and personality. But when it comes to UX writing, be careful. If it is a message that the user must see again and again, it can quickly become annoying with the humor text.
If, on the other hand, it is a message that the user will only see a few times or once, there is a good opportunity to unfold yourself and let the company’s personality shine through.