The Beginners Guide to Writing Microcopy
Create better user experiences through microcopy
Microcopy is 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. 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.
In this article, you’ll learn some best practices to help you start recognizing and writing better microcopy. You may also want to read our in-depth article on how to get started in UX writing.
Measuring the success of microcopy
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?
Microcopy exists to make your product or interface more:
Usable
Helpful
Accessible
Clear
Appropriate
Seamless
Branded
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 testing (most effective testing method)
Data analysis
User interviews
Analysis of customer support requests
Principles of good microcopy 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.
How to make microcopy 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, how to avoid errors, 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.
Instagram has a good examples of usable microcopy. Once a user clicks on “delete” for a photo, the app doesn’t just delete your photo right away. Instead, it asks you to confirm first.
It’s treated like a simple conversation:
“Delete first?” it asks. You can respond by clicking on, “cancel” or “delete.”
Deleting a photo by mistake would be a frustrating error, so they’re using microcopy to help prevent an error.
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.
For more on usability, a good foundation is learning about the Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. Although these heuristics are intended for “interaction design,” microcopy is as much design as anything else is.
How to make microcopy 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 gives you a suggestion of what to search for. For example, it might say, “Try Berlin,” or “Try Tenerife.” 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.
How to make microcopy 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.
Charles Schwab has accessible button copy here, saying ‘Open an Account.” This is clear, accurate, and doesn’t require surrounding copy to be understandable.
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.
How to make microcopy 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?
How to make microcopy 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.
We also love to talk about brand voice and personality in microcopy, 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.
How to make your microcopy more appropriate:
Deeply understand your users, the scenarios and environments they’ll be in, and how the interface actually functions
Conduct user tests, usability studies, and field research that accounts for varying situations and environments. In other words, see if people can understand your microcopy
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.
How to make microcopy seamless
What we mean by seamless is, seamlessly integrated with design. 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 in the design process. Lorem ipsum is meaningless placeholder text that tends to 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
How to make microcopy 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. To do this, you’ll need to figure out what your brand sounds like first.
Write consistent, branded microcopy by:
Host a brand voice workshop with your team to define your brand voice
Create a content style guide that documents your brand voice, tone, editorial style, and messaging
Create a microcopy pattern library with commonly used words and phrases. Will you say sign-in, or log in? Pick one, stick to it, and put it in a document somewhere so that you never forget.
Need outside help with your microcopy?
We are a UX writing and content strategy agency who cares a lot about words, and even more about your users.
Contact us if you need some help.