UX Copywriting is fast becoming a skill every copywriter needs to stay ahead of the competition. But what is it, exactly? And how can you use it in your own writing?
UX, or “User Experience” Copywriting, is a writing skill that helps your clients improve readers’ experience on their websites, leading to more sales and better satisfaction with their services. As more clients realize they need better UX, it’s becoming the future of copywriting.
In this video, Heather Robson, co-owner of Dragonfly Media and a pioneer in UX copywriting, explains how it works and why it will set you apart as a copywriter.
To learn why UX is fast becoming a mandatory skill for copywriters … how to avoid losing business from the “fickle” 88% of prospects who would otherwise walk away on a dime … and why it’s critical for you to avoid “shadow language” in your writing watch Heather’s full interview from AWAI’s State of the Industry Summit 2021 at:
awai.com/summit
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Host: Tim Matassa
Heather Robson:
The best user experiences are
sites where it’s just really easy to see what your next steps are.
There’s no confusion introduced. It’s effortless to move forward with what you want to do.
Sites that are written very conversationally
and that are more focused on helping you
rather than selling you.
Those tend to be the things that stand out in good user experience.
Google does not like pop-ups.
So particularly on a mobile site,
they want the pop ups to not
interfere with the user’s experience,
which doesn’t mean that you can’t use them,
but it does mean that they need
to be really easy to click out of.
And they also should not take up the whole page
and make it impossible for you to see what’s happening before you click out.
So we’re talking about small things
that slide up at the bottom.
Or that maybe slide down at the top.
We need writers who can pause and really think about the space that our users are in
rather than bringing their own assumptions to the table,
leaving those to the side and recognizing the space
that our users are in when they arrive.
And this happens pretty much on every single page.
Things you may find yourself doing as a user experience copywriter,
it’s actually a smart thing to do, is just offering to go through a company’s signup process
or a company’s check-out process and letting them know what you find.
The number of companies that are really starting to look,
not just for UX writers, but they want UX copywriters,
they want copywriters on their team who are user-focused and who understand these UX principles.
So that’s been one really big
change and then the other one,
we’ve lived through kind of a strange year in this past year.
We’ve all probably spent a little bit more time online than we maybe have ever
before in our lives,
which has really brought home the importance of the role technology
and software plays in our lives
and has really brought home how important it is
for those things to provide a good user experience
that facilitates our goals as users,
not just the company’s goals.
Back in the early 2000s,
there was this thing called SEO
and it was kind of this add-on that you can do to your copy as a specialty.
And we thought it was a little bit techie and bit geeky and it was pretty cool,
but not everybody wanted to do it.
But we hit a point where if you were doing content anyway you pretty
much had to understand it to be able to do it well.
That’s where we’re going with UX.
Give it five to ten years, and everybody is going to have to have a handle on user experience.
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Discover How Post-Pandemic Digital Marketing Will Transform Your Copywriting Career This Year at the 2021 State of the Industry Virtual Summit. Visit awai.com/summit
