UX Writing Services: How Is It Different from Other Forms of Writing?

Why Is It Important?

As more and more companies transition online, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a strong online presence. Your website is often the first point of contact between you and your potential customers, so it is vital that it makes a good impression and sets them off on a positive user journey.

If your website is difficult to use or navigate, people will leave and go to competitors. This is also something you must remember for the mobile version of your site. According to Google, 61% of users will not return to a site if it is poorly designed on mobile. Moreover, 40% will head to a competitor’s site as a direct result!

UX writing is an integral part of providing a good overall user experience. Effective navigation labels, for example, can help guide users through your site and simplify navigation. More generally, by creating user-friendly, relevant content, you can ensure that people stay on your website and continue using your products or services.

How Is It Different from Other Forms of Writing?

The main difference is that UX writing is focused on the user.

UX writing is usually shorter and simpler than other forms of writing. This is because people do not want to read long paragraphs of text on a website. They want to find the information they need quickly and easily.

With UX writing, the user always comes first. The content must be useful and relevant to them, and also provide clarity.

In addition to this, UX writing must be consistent across the entire website. This means that the tone of voice, style of writing, and overall message must be the same on every page. This can be a challenge for companies that have different people working on different parts of their website. However, it is essential to maintain a consistent user experience.

Now we will compare UX writing to two other forms of writing: copywriting and SEO writing. Although there are similarities in the way – as they are all written in some ways for the user – they have key differences.

Copywriting

Copywriting is designed to provide information for the user. It tends to be long-form and often useful for product descriptions and news items.

The idea of copywriting is to give the user enough information to either…

• make an informed decision about a purchase,

or

• help them form an opinion about something, like a news story.

Substantial amounts of information is key for copywriting, whereas short directional text that aids user navigation is key to UX writing.

SEO Writing

The key goal of SEO writing is to construct copy that allows crawlers – like the Googlebot – to easily understand a page so that it can rank well on search engines.

Given that there is an increasing amount of Google algorithm updates that are relevant to providing a good user experience, the user is also a central focus of SEO writing as search engines. This is exemplified by updates such as:

• The mobile-friendly update
• The helpful content update
• The product reviews update

In fact, we have extensively covered this topic in our article on UX vs SEO.

Similar to copywriting, SEO writing tends to be in medium or long form. It is about providing quality information to search engines and the user by using good grammar, clear headings, authoritative links, quality images, and so on.

The primary difference between UX writing and SEO writing is that – in some unique cases – good UX goes against good SEO. For example, non-descriptive links/anchor text do not help bots understand the destination of that link. However, the user will find a “LEARN MORE” button much more useful/instructive than an “SEO AUDIT” button without any context.

The UX Writing Process

This UX writing process consists of three steps:

1. Identify your target audience
2. A/B testing
3. Ensure your copy is consistent across your website

Target Audience

The first step to any marketing strategy should be to understand your target audience. These are the people who are buying your product or using your services. The goal is to understand exactly who they are and what they hope to achieve by using your company.

We have long been an advocate of using data to better understand our clients’ audiences. In order to identify your target audience, you need to use all the tools available to you. The free Google tools are a great place to start!

Google Analytics and Google Search Console respectively tell you what your visitors are doing on your website and what they are searching for to reach your website. It is important to understand the terminology users are using to find you and what pages they visit when they land on your website. This information should inform the content you write.

How your users interact with your website is another important factor. Ideally, you would use a tool like Mouseflow. This tool tracks users when they are on your website and shows you exactly how they are moving around, what elements they interact with, and where they might be having difficulty.

Before doing anything – including UX writing – identifying your target audience and understanding their needs, wants, and expectations should be the first steps you take.

A/B Testing

The next step in the UX writing process is testing. Once you know your target audience, you need to test various phrases and discover those that produce the highest conversion rate.

As previously mentioned, a large part of writing for UX is short sentences. In some cases, two or three words are all that is required. However, those short sentences need to have the right impact. Writing short sentences may not be too time-consuming but identifying the correct text to use is.

Finding the right text might take months of testing. The test needs to be scientifically viable and performed efficiently using an A/B testing tool. Any test needs to measure the same levels of traffic and engagement, then the best-performing text should be chosen.

Consistency

Finally, once you have found the correct copy, be consistent with your tone of voice and style of writing across your whole website. This will help to create a cohesive user experience. However, bear in mind that some pages may require slightly different wording, but that does not have to impact tone or style.