Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium UX Boot Camp

#30dayUXchallenge [Day 26]

We have talked a lot about UX best practices, using a style guide but sometimes what can get forgotten about or often left until the end is the copywriting. The words on the screen are one of the most important aspects. A lot of larger companies have dedicated copywriters and at Marktplaats we work closely with the marketing team who are skilled in writing content and this ensures that we have conistent communication across all channels in the way we speak to our users, through emails, publications, FAQs, etc. and of course the product itself.

Today lets discuss how important it is to have UX involved in copywriting. When I was studying Graphic Design, I used to fill my designs with Lorem Ipsum and tell myself that ‘we will add content later…’ but over the years, through experience I have learned that this just doesn’t work. Best practice is to always use real content from the start as we go through the whole design process.

Adding the content from the beginning really makes you think about every word, heading and sentence, from a user perspective in the context of what the user is trying to achieve, after all it’s a huge part of the experience we are designing. Because of this just adding the copy or thinking about it at the end just doesn’t make sense.

As a non-Dutch speaker, working for Marktplaats, one of the most Dutch companies in the Netherlands you can imagine that copywriting is a very difficult task for me. I will generally create all of my designs in English and then work with Product management & Marketing to finalise the copy. Here are the four key steps I like to think of in the copywriting process:

1. User context

2. Consistency

3. Brand

4. Localization & Globalization

1. Context

In my opinion this is the first step in copy writing It’s all about understanding the user, what they need to know and designing the best way for them to understand. Is the user familiar with this scenario? Do they need more context to support the task that they are trying to achieve? How can we say this in a way that will make sense to our user?

This generally happens as a fluid part of the design process when we are designing a flow or user scenario it’s when we decide that there needs to be a heading here, a button, some text to give the user context about what they are doing. It’s here where we need to stop useing those black lines in our wire frames (we all do it) and to start to think about why we are drawing them. Does the user really need to know something here? It will also help us to consider if this is really the best solution, if we need a paragraph of text explaining to the user what they need to do, is it really a simple enough solution? By considering our copy at this stage it can really be an eye opener to challenge our overall designs. I will always create this in English because at this point it’s important that I know exactly what we are trying to communicate to the users and why.

2. Consistency

This is where we need to ensure we are being consistent across the platform and across channels in the way we talk about different pages, different actions and different products. For example do we say ‘close’ or ‘exit’, do we call it ‘home’ or ‘main’? By being very strict about these little inconsistencies we can create a seamless experience for our users. These little changes even though they may not seem like a big deal in the simple examples of close vs. exit but can really effect the perception of our product, it can come across as unconsidered, inconsistent and really just making our user think a little bit more about something, creating unnecessary barriers.

3. Brand

After going through the context and the consistency phases we know what we want to say, why we want to say it and saying it in a way that is acccessible to our users, next is to make sure we are communicating in a way that is ‘on brnad’. Being ‘on brand’ with your copy is hard, but it’s so important, the tone of voice, the words you use and the way you phrase sentences becomes the ‘voice’ of the company, it’s how we speak to our users.

4. Globalization & Localization

After creating copy that is considered for the context, consistency and the brand the next thing is to consider globalization & localization. Globalization refers to making sure the solution will work for multiple languages and cultures and localization means making sure it makes sense for an individual language and culture.

When we talk about globalization we generally consider how we will translate the system at scale. The lenght of words in different languages and also the text alignment. For example German words are often very long compared to English words, so considering the width of our dropdowns or filters and our CTAs and headings is important. Arabic is written right to left, this could effect some interactions and the order of components on a page.

Localization is where you consider the nuances of different cultures it could be the way they phrase things or even the different meaning of words. For example there is a huge different between British English and American English, some words can have very different connotations. Creating my designs in English for Marktplaats allows me to really especially understand the point about context, but I will then work with Marketing and other native Dutch speakers on my team to craft the translation together. How can we say the same thing in Dutch and in a way that is appropriate for Dutch users. Often words and sentences don’t translate directly and just the way of saying things are be completely different.

In conclusion copywriting should be part of your UX process, not just an after thought at the end, something tagged on during your fianl spell check. Make it a collaborative process, and work with your PM & Marketing team to have consistent and appropriate copy that makes sense for the user and brings additional value to the experience.

Share with us your throughs on copywriting. 🙂

<a href="https://medium.com/media/8d5e2c740a04faf463af9accfa7e3c31/href">https://medium.com/media/8d5e2c740a04faf463af9accfa7e3c31/href</a>Rochelle Carr | UX Designer, Placing customer journey team, Marktplaats, Ebay. Soft spot for red wine & tries to learn Dutch in her spare time.

This post is part of the #30dayUXchallenge: you can read more about why we started it here, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Instagram!

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Making copywriting part of the UX process

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