7 Principles of Good UX Writing
How do you know if UX writing work is any good? Here are 7 principles you can use to evaluate and guide UX writing work
What makes UX Writing good?
With something like copywriting, the goal is crystal clear: make more sales. But with microcopy, the user is already a customer, and the goals may not seem so clear and easy to measure.
That’s why in order to write “good” microcopy, it helps to first understand what “good” even means. How do you know your microcopy is working? How do you know it’s not?
You’ll know if your microcopy is working if your users can:
Easily use and understand your interface, without needing much (or any) assistance
Easily use and understand your interface, even with disabilities and in various contexts/platforms/environments
Accomplish their tasks and goals quickly, without having to think too much
Enjoy using your interface and come back to it often
You can measure the success of your microcopy through:
User and usability testing (most effective testing method)
Web and mobile data, heat maps, and visitor recordings
Analysis of customer support and help requests
But what are some underlying principles to help guide your UX writing decisions in the first place? And what if you’re not a UX writer, but you need to review someone’s work?
To help with that, I’ve synthesized my experience and approach into 7 guiding principles. These principles don’t mean you shouldn’t test your copy or do user testing, but they can be seen as general concepts to guide your work or your evaluations.
The 7 principles of great UX writing:
Usable
Helpful
Accessible
Clear
Appropriate
Seamless
Branded
Before we dive into the principles in more detail, let’s quickly define two terms.
“Microcopy” refers to the small words and phrases within a product interface that make it usable. Without microcopy, people would not be able to use or understand apps, kiosks, portals, or websites. It is an essential component of a user experience.
“UX Writers” are the people who write microcopy, and “UX Writing” is the act, practice, or field. Although the terms microcopy and UX writing are relatively new, the practice of writing microcopy has been around for as long as we’ve had interfaces. For a long time, marketing writers, technical writers and designers were tasked with writing microcopy — as if those people didn’t have enough to do already. Design leaders today are realizing that microcopy is so central to the user experience that a specialist should write it. We couldn’t agree more. For a more in-depth definition, check out our post on what UX writing is.
Alright—on to the 7 principles!
7 principles of good UX writing and how to apply them
Let’s dig into those guiding principles of what makes microcopy good, and how we can actually accomplish those things.
1. Usable
Usable microcopy makes it easy for people to literally use your product or interface without thinking about it too much. You’ll know something is not usable when people have a ton of questions about how your product works, how to navigate through it, and how to complete tasks they want to do. I think of usable microcopy as words that improve or enable the functionality of a product.
During the writing and revision process, consider usability before delight. If something doesn’t work, that cheeky bit of microcopy might actually be annoying. Your product has to work well first before it can be cute.
You can make your microcopy more usable by:
Understanding your users and what they care about by conducting user interviews, surveys, and user tests and usability studies.
Understanding how your interface works by collaborating with your developers and asking tons of “what if?” questions.
2. Helpful
Helpful microcopy goes a step past making it usable. It’s microcopy that offers up useful information that you might not have known you needed.
As a metaphor, imagine that you’re en route to stay at a beach resort for a weekend. You call the front desk to ask if they have pharmacy onsite. The reception could say, “no,” and that would be technically be accurate. But they could also say something like, “We don’t have a pharmacy, but we have a small selection of drugs in our gift shop. What are you looking for?” The latter response is much more helpful customer service.
To write helpful microcopy, think about the functionality of your product and the larger goals that your user has. The AirBnB product experience has a great example of this (and, not surprisingly, they hire UX writers).
In the search bar of the AirBnB homepage, they have microcopy that asks you the user a question—where are you going?—to help them understand that they should enter the name of a city.
Source: www.airbnb.com
This microcopy is usable, because it reinforces the fact that you can search; but it’s also helpful, because it gives you an example of what you might search for. Instead of just saying, “search here,” they thought about what you might be trying to do (plan a trip), and suggest you start by searching the name of your destination.
3. Accessible
Accessible microcopy means that your interface can be used or accessed by people with disabilities. First, know that accessible interfaces actually benefit everyone, with or without disabilities, because it means your interface is even easier to use. Second, know that “people with disabilities” is actually a lot of people. Many business leaders assume that accessibility only matters to a small percentage of their users, but study after study proves that people’s abilities fall on a wide spectrum — and the majority of adult web users can benefit from accessible technology. Just check out this accessibility study from Microsoft.
So how do you write accessible microcopy? That could be it’s own blog post, but here are just a few best practices.
Include alternate text for images and icons
Include captions and transcript for audio
Prioritize being clear over being clever
Structure content so it’s scannable, and the important info is in headers and subheads
Write clear, understandable links and button text
For more about accessibility, check out these 7 guidelines for writing accessible microcopy, and our guide on web content accessibility.
4. Clear
Marketing copywriters often prioritize clever, punchy copy to grab people’s attention. Microcopy writers prioritize clarity. If something isn’t clear, it can’t also be usable, helpful, or accessible.
Continuously ask things like:
Would this be clear to the oldest and youngest people in my user base?
Would this be clear if they only read it once, and read it quickly?
Would this be clear if someone was stressed and busy?
Would this be clear if someone had never used my interface before?
5. Appropriate
Good microcopy is appropriate and adaptive to the specific situation or environment it exists in. It adapts to the needs of the user as those needs change throughout the experience. The meaning of the words, the tone, and the length should all adapt to the situation in order to be appropriate.
For example, we often just think of microcopy as being “short.” But sometimes, using 3 words is actually less appropriate than using 10 words. It depends on the context and the user needs.
Also, while brand voice and personality in microcopy is a popular topic, but a big part of brand voice is tone — which is how the voice adapts to different contexts. Your tone should be different for a confirmation message versus an error message to be appropriate.
How to make your microcopy more appropriate:
Deeply understand your users, the scenarios and environments they’ll be in, and how the interface functions
Conduct smart copy testing, like running usability tests and doing field research to accounts for varying situations and environments
In your team’s design process, start with user needs first. Then create copy and design around those needs. It’s harder to be appropriate retroactively.
6. Seamless
What we mean by seamless is, seamlessly integrated with design. (If you can think of a better one-word title for this principle, let us know!)
Your copy and design should make sense together and support each other. The best case scenario when you have mismatched words and visuals is that you missed an opportunity to deliver a great experience. The worst case scenario is that you confuse the heck out of your users.
How to integrate copy with design:
Get writers and designers working together early-on in the process
Avoid using “lorem ipsum” text in the design process. “Lorem ipsum” is meaningless placeholder text that can lead designers in the wrong direction and cause unnecessary rounds of revision later on.
Think about the user need first, then figure out how design and copy can meet that need together
Note: seamless does not mean frictionless. Sometimes, friction can be used intentionally to help users avoid errors, or guide them into better user paths. Credit to Laura Luck for putting this into words perfectly via this Instagram post about purposeful friction.
7. Branded
Just like good design, good microcopy should feel like it’s part of the same brand. It would be weird if your bank’s mobile app had a different logo in the app versus the website, right? Right. So we don’t want to confuse people with inconsistent, off-brand microcopy either.
Write consistent, branded microcopy by:
Creating a content style guide that defines your brand voice, tone, editorial style, and messaging
Create a microcopy pattern library with commonly used words and phrases. For example, will your interface say sign in, or log in? Pick one and stick to it, and document that kind of decision for your team.
Above all else, your UX writing should be user-centered. Otherwise, it’s not really UX writing work.
If your working process and approach to creating microcopy isn’t user-centered, then… well, what you’re doing isn’t really UX writing. You can’t have UX writing without the UX part.
For more on writing user-centered content, check out some of our in-depth guides:
If you need a UX writing agency or UX writer to partner with, please reach out to schedule a call with us. We’d love to help you plan and write microcopy that works. You can also learn more about our UX writing services here.
Thanks for reading!