The Ultimate Guide to UX Writing

The Ultimate Guide to UX Writing

For online users, the experience they get when interacting with a particular digital product determines whether they will keep using it or will go for something else.

The User Interface (UI) dictates the User Experience (UX) on multiple levels, and crafting good content is an integral part of operating a digital product.
There is a lot of content involved in the UI, and knowing how to craft this content appropriately can win more readership or even viewership for your site.

Why UX Writing

When online users visit your digital product, whether it is a website or a blog, the User Interface is something they will check all the time they will be on the site. The content itself tells a lot about the efforts that went into the design.
Lousy content that has spelling errors or poorly crafted content shows that the owner of the product did not fully work on his or her offering. In this sense, therefore, proper UX writing remains an aspect that cannot be easily wished away by creators of digital products.
Some key areas to focus on in UX writing include:

  • Clarity.
  • Sentence Length.
  • Objectivity.
  • Nature of words.
  • Nature of text.
  • Visuals.
  • Relevance of language used.
  • Calls to action.
  • Consistency.
  • The flow of content and information.

Work on Clarity

Essentially, UX writing is often short and limited. There isn’t much space on the User Interface to put a lot of content like one would have in a separate context. Therefore, it is highly crucial to ensure that the content is as clear as possible. Whether it is error messages, terms and conditions, or any other relevant piece of text, of great importance is ensuring that the content is clear as possible.

Use Short Sentences

In today’s highly digital age, there is a lot of information on the web. Many online users continue to grapple with information overload by the day. For this reason, it is crucial to ensure that you use short sentences whenever you are doing UX writing. Short and impactful sentences can help to put your message across properly.
Visitors also get an easy time navigating your site and extracting the relevant information or stuff they came for on your website.

Be Objective

Given the limited space on the UI, it is highly important to remain as objective as possible during the design and UX writing phases. This means that you have to air out the main points or details about the website. Being objective also eliminates any form of bias, and allows the audience to get the most relevant information about the site or the product in question.

Do Not Use Jargon

Attention online is not guaranteed. The chances that an online user will hop to the next site because of cases of unclear or hard-to-understand words and sentences are very high. It is, therefore, proper to use words that are simple and easy to understand. Complex words and jargon will lead to an undesirable and boring User Experience and will put off users and visitors.

Make the Text Scannable

Scannable text is easy to read and follow through. However, not all designers and website owners consider this aspect. Some use large blocks of text in their UIs. Using small blocks of text, lines, and sentences that are readable makes it easier to go through the text. This highly improves the readability. Visitors will have a good and easy time going through such content or text, and the overall result is an enhanced User Experience.

Embed Visuals

Online users tend to consume more visual content than text. This is so because visuals often express information in an easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow manner. In this sense, you have to ensure that visuals form a particular part of your UX writing. This will help to reinforce the message that you are passing to your visitors.

Use Relevant Language

Different sites or blogs, or broadly, digital products, cover different areas of concern. When crafting UI content, is it essential to ensure that the content is in line with the mainstay of the site or blog. This helps to improve the relevance of the blog, and also boosts and improves the experience that users will get when they visit the site.
The use of keywords could also work to your advantage. Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) could help to advance and propagate you to your goals as far as your digital product goes.

Calls to Action

The reason the site exists in the first place is to target a particular audience. It is, therefore, essential to embed the appropriate calls to action so that you gain conversions if conversions are the ultimate goal for you. Calls to action may include subscribing to a newsletter, checking out a particular product, or subscribing to a specific plan.

Consistency

Consistency is a key aspect to look at when crafting UI copy. The choice of words should be uniform throughout the content or text. If you are using ‘visitors,’ then it is vital to maintain that than using ‘readers’ or ‘viewers.’ Inconsistency might lead to confusion, which might not work out well for you in the end.

The Flow of Content and Information

You do not want your visitors to get all the information or highlights in the first three sentences of the text in your UI. Mostly, you want them to scroll downwards and read while they get to know and interact with the website more.
If this is so, you need to ensure that you work on how you structure your content. There is a need to organize and structure your content in such a manner that users get an incentive to keep hovering all around the site for more information. This is how you improve your chances of getting more successful conversions through your established call-to-action channels.
To sum this up, the User Interface dictates the time the visitor will spend on your site, and whether they will get an incentive to revisit it. How the key content appears matters very highly. It, therefore, remains essential to get the basics right when it comes to UI and UX to avoid pitfalls that may end up costing you in the long term.

Posted by Kristin Savage

Kristin Savage
Kristin Savage nourishes, sparks and empowers using the magic of a word. Along with pursuing her degree in Creative Writing, Kristin was gaining experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy for publishers and authors. Now she works as a freelance writer at PickTheWriter. Kristin runs her own FlyWriting blog.

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