In this guide, you are going to learn about a strategic creative UX writing plan to help you sell more products. Bear in mind, User Experience (UX) is an essential part of a customer’s overall experience with your brand. This is why making sure that your website’s UX is as good as it can be. The better your website is designed, the more satisfied users will be.
Additionally, you need to take care of your web content. UX writing is critical for your website’s UX, so the best thing is to have a concrete strategy. Surprisingly, most leading companies such as Wix, Booking, and Google — who had the foresight to understand the value of creative UX writing — are basically thriving as a result of great user experience.
Perse, these companies provide their customers with products that make their lives easier, due in no small part to the influence that UX writers have had on those products. Booking.com, for example, has a UX writer for every 5 or 6 designers. By contrast, Oracle has been slower to adapt, with a ratio that’s close to 100:1 — their product suffers for it as a result.
In reality, multiple-form fields increase drop-out rates. Thus, UX teams (including writers) must find user-friendly ways to register users. Whilst, taking advantage of available technologies (e.g. using Facebook or Google accounts). So, to get an idea of where we are all headed in this, let’s first try to define the meaning of a User Experience (UX), shall we?
What A User Experience (UX) In Design Terms Entail
In general, User experience (UX) refers to any interaction a user has with a product or service. Practically, it considers each and every element that shapes this experience, how it makes the user feel, and how easy it is to accomplish their desired tasks. Anything from how a physical product feels in your hand, to how straightforward the checkout process is.
Particularly, when buying something that best interests them online. In this case, we can clearly say that the main goal of UX design is to create easy, efficient, relevant, and all-around pleasant experiences for the user. People depend on mobile devices every day for communications, eCommerce, content consumption, work, banking, directions, etc.
And most increasingly, as their sole computing device. What’s more, they are using a variety of devices such as mobile phones, smartwatches, tablets, phablets, wearables, and hybrid laptops. Technically, a great user experience (UX) design encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with a web business company, its services, and its products.
Learn More: User Interface (UI) Design | Best Practices For Futuristic Websites & Applications
Markedly, it’s so important to distinguish the totality of user experience design from the user interface design, even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design. Whilst, bearing in mind, the User Interface (UI) is the point of human-computer interaction and communication in a device.
This can include display screens, keyboards, a mouse, and the appearance of a desktop. It’s also the way through which a user interacts with an application or a website. Websites such as Airbnb, Dropbox, and Virgin America display strong user interface designs. Ultimately, these sites have created pleasant, easily operable, User-Centered Designs (UCD) per se.
Ultimately, with key features that focus on the target user and their overall unique needs. At all costs, a great User-Centered Design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each design phase. Coupled with a few Creative UX Writing Skills here and there, you’ll fulfill all your end-user design demands.
What Creative UX Writing Skills Usually Entails
To enumerate, creative UX writing is the process of creating written content that helps the user accomplish their goals. For novice writers, this means, that the words need to be user-centered. But, that doesn’t mean business goals should be ignored. Instead, creative UX writing is about creating content that strikes a balance between business goals and your user needs.
In reality, it should always be considered to work in harmony with intuitive UX design to give users an incredible experience. But, wait a moment… What does user-centered content actually look like? Thankfully, there’s general agreement in the industry about this… User-centered content is driven by a variety of very basic elements that are the core components.
UX content is:
- Clear
- Concise
- Consistent
- Actionable
As such, most creative UX writing experts create content based on these four characteristics to ensure the user is always moved forward in their journey. In addition, it also happens that this is most often good for business as well! In fact, many UX writers have drawn a parallel between their trade and customer service, as the main goal of both professions.
And that’s to give the users or customers the assistance they need to move forward with their goals. As well as to keep a good relationship with the company. Both call for an empathetic understanding of your users and their needs. Also, making sure the user is always moved forward means that a strong knowledge of the product user journey is essential.
In terms of content, creative UX writing experts also need to create content that will embody the product’s voice and tone. As a matter of fact, UX writers often play a vital role in creating voice and tone guidelines for a product. Whilst, making content strategy and branding somewhat inherent to their role… and now, this leads us nicely to answering the next question.
Why Are Creative UX Writing Skills Important?
While there are differences in UX and UI design, one must put equal effort into each to create intuitive, easy-to-use, and aesthetically appealing applications. UX without UI would be a house that has the right layout and number of rooms but is horribly outdated or run-down. In essence, UI without UX would just be a beautiful modern, open loft studio, yes!
But, it would not meet the needs of a large family. When it stops being neither UX design nor UI design, when all elements come together and the right mix of both is achieved, then the perfect home can be realized. Of course, this is also coupled with great and creative UX writing skills. In simple terms, creative UX writing is the process of creating unique content.
Content that helps the user accomplish their goals. Furthermore, to really understand what UX writing is, you need a good understanding of what “user experience” is in the first place: The key part of this definition as it relates to UX writing, in particular, is “accomplish their desired tasks.” The process of creating written content for users to accomplish their goals.
In layman’s language, this means that the words need to be user-centered, but that doesn’t mean business goals should be ignored. Instead, a strategic UX writing plan is all about creating content that strikes a balance between business goals and user needs — and works in harmony with intuitive UX design to give users an incredible experience.
The Topmost Best Creative UX Writing Steps To Consider
To begin with, given the rate at which UX and other related high-quality content writing skills demand are growing today, companies are set to hire thousands of UX writers in the next few years. This means, that if you’ve got the feeling that the best time to become a UX writer was yesterday, you’re not far off. So, perhaps you’re wondering how to start.
Fortunately, there are many resources available for aspiring UX writers, with more springing up every day. For your information, there are some of them out there that are some of our favorites even here in our community.
Consider some of these references:
- A mega list of UX writing resources
- Free UX writing material resources
- Microcopy and UX writing Facebook discussion group
- The Best UX Writing Job Board For Freelancers
As such, you can go ahead and explore any of the above fields — whenever you feel ready, consider some formal/structured training. Similarly, you may also want to put into consideration a general UX design course as well — so as to learn the basics. Or perhaps, you can take a UX writing course that will let you work with a mentor who will guide your development.
Not to mention, such courses will also help you get the experience needed to land your first job. Of course, it’s worth mentioning that there aren’t any shortcuts in this marketplace at all! Without further ado, below are the simple steps to create a strategic creative UX writing plan to sell more business products while converting potential customers into active buyers.
Step #1: Write For Your Audience
Perhaps one of the most important things about UX writing is that you should always put your target audience first. Everyone coming to your website needs to get a good experience and wants to come back for more in the future. This is precisely why you need to write for your audience. By all means, working in UX requires that you put your ego aside.
And then again, try to remain as open as possible — to different ideas and suggestions. Always remember, that this is not about you — it’s about the alignment of user needs and business goals. This means you must be able to put your ego aside, listen to feedback, and remain open to new ideas. To write for your audience, you need to know your audience.
Ask yourself a few questions first. For instance, ask yourself: Who are these people that you are writing for? How can you group them into specific industry segments? Or rather, how will their overall experiences vary depending on the segment? Always keep such things in mind when designing your UX writing strategy and then creating your web content.
Step #2: Utilize Your Brand Voice
You are certainly already utilizing branding throughout your website, but it is particularly important for your UX writing. Using your brand voice is crucial for delivering your message through your content, but it is also important to distinguish yourself from other brands. It is a way to give your content more style that is unique to your brand.
If you don’t have a brand voice yet, then it is time to create one for your brand. Essentially, you need to think about the values of your brand and the kind of image you want to have to choose the brand voice that will be the most fitting. For instance, if you want to have a casual image, then a casual and friendly brand voice is a good choice.
Step #3: Personalize User Experiences
As explained earlier, you should always write for your target audience. Moreover, you need to personalize user experiences as much as possible. Though you will be already segmenting your audience and creating different experiences for each group, you should still try to personalize even the individual journey of each user.
This can be somewhat difficult to manage, so you can find ratings and reviews of writing services at Rated by Students and then hire writers to help you create personalized content. This content can include both on-site content (e.g. product recommendations based on user activity) and off-site content that is a continuation of the user’s experience with your brand.
For example, through utilizing your email subscribers list in your email marketing strategy to provide them with unique coupon codes and special offers. As a UX writer, you will have to coordinate between UX designers, product managers, developers, and even stakeholders. Not forgetting, building deep relationships with them is a critical part of the UX writing job.
Step #4: Avoid Using Word Jargon
It goes without saying that you need to be consistent with the terminology you use throughout your content. You wouldn’t want to confuse your website visitors by calling the same thing differently on different pages. At the same time, you should try to avoid using any kind of jargon that could be equally if not more confusing to your audience.
Many of the words and phrases you want to use could look alien to your website visitors, so it is almost always best to avoid them. If you do want to use some jargon here and there, make sure that it is absolutely necessary, it fits your brand voice, and it won’t be confusing to your audience.
Step #5: Follow The Use Journey
Following the specific user journey and the route they took is one more way for you to better understand your website visitors and how they will act in specific situations when interacting with your website. By utilizing the different points in the user journey to your advantage, you could have more control over your audience’s behavior.
For instance, you could guide users to perform specific actions. You can’t make a person do something, but you can create the right conditions for them to perform the desired action. This way, you could eventually increase your sales by utilizing your web content smartly and creating better UX on your website.
Step #6: Add Humor (But, Be Careful!)
Humor could add some flavor to your web content by making it more entertaining. Even if your content’s purpose isn’t to entertain (but rather to inform or educate), you might still be able to add a joke here or there to spice things up. And besides, using humor could help you show a more appealing personality and humanize your brand.
That being said, you need to be careful with adding humor to your UX writing. This is because it is easy to go overboard, be inappropriate, or simply write jokes that fall flat. You can compare writing services at Top Writing Reviews and then hire an experienced writer who will write content for you or add humor to pre-written content.
Step #7: Prioritize Accessibility
Unlike accounting, which has been around for hundreds of years, UX writing is still developing with the help of the community. There are many online UX writing groups where you can participate in discussions or just stay in the loop. UX writing methodologies are developing rapidly — writers must take it upon themselves to stay abreast of these changes.
Making your website more accessible will help you improve its overall UX, but it is also a good idea to prioritize accessibility specifically in your UX writing. If you want every user to feel comfortable browsing your website, there are some things to do.
Consider the following:
- Include Alt Text for Images
- Use Headings to Structure Content
- Give the Links Descriptive Names
- Utilize Color Theory Correctly
- Add Keyboard Navigation
- Make the URLs Descriptive
- Provide Video and Audio Transcripts
- Improve the Website Loading Speed
Step #8: Value Your Audience’s Time
Speaking of your website loading speed, it is important both for accessibility and for this next tip. Throughout all your content, you need to show that you value your audience’s time. Your UX writing can help you create such experiences for your website visitors where they can instantly find what they are looking for.
That being said, try to make your website navigation page design both easy and straightforward for your target audience and potential readers. Then, gradually develop your internal and external linking. Aim for intuitive browsing, so that any user can figure out how to navigate your website on their own. Doing all of this will help you make user experiences more comfortable.
Overall, which will also improve the user search intent and reduce the amount of time they’ll need to spend looking for information on your website.
Step #9: Publish Success Stories
Success stories are a powerful form of social proof, so they can already be helpful in persuading customers to make a purchase. In addition to that, publishing success stories can be useful for UX writing in a number of ways:
- Reduce Expenses – By curating customer reviews and success stories, you can reduce the amount of content you need to produce regularly. Additionally, you can also partially outsource content production by hiring experienced writers from the writing service Trust My Paper which will also give you more time for other tasks.
- Connect with Users – Success stories can help you connect with your audience on a more personal, emotional level. They add a human touch to your web content and show that your products are worth buying.
- Enrich the Website – As a part of your content strategy, success stories can be a valuable addition to your website. You can create a separate page for them while also showing them on respective product pages.
Clearly, the commonality among creative UX writers seems to be that there is no commonality, leaving the door open to nearly anyone interested and motivated.
Step #10: Be Clear, Direct, And Consistent
As mentioned earlier, being consistent with your terminology is absolutely a must. However, you should also be consistent with everything else related to your UX writing. Moreover, you should also be clear and direct in all your web content. Avoid being vague, misleading, confusing, etc.
By clearly explaining what you mean, you will prevent any kind of miscommunication between yourself and your audience. Likewise, being direct will speed up communication as well. Of course, there are times when you might be less straightforward (e.g. when rewording CTAs in different ways), but generally, you want to be as direct as possible.
Step #11: Solve Common User Problems
Users browsing your website want to get their problems solved. They want to find the answers to the questions they have and purchase the products they are in need of. This is why the primary purpose of all your UX writing needs to be solving user problems.
For example, when a user is looking for your contact information, they need to be able to find it quickly. On product pages, you need to present all the relevant information and answer common customer questions. On your blog, you need to present articles and guides with information that will be helpful to your audience.
Step #12: Back Up Your Claims With Data
Lastly, always make sure to back up all your claims with data. When you state something, you need to be able to prove that it is true by utilizing existing research or performing your own research on the matter.
It’s also a good idea to present information and data in a more dynamic way by visualizing it. You can explain complex processes with the help of infographics, show survey results in pie charts or bar graphs, and organize data into tables among other things.
Why Consider Any Writing As A Professional Career?
You should take any form of content writing and copywrite seriously! As professional UX designers ourselves, most of us believe that the roles of product designer and UX writer are complementary. When our UX Writing Hub partner course graduates apply for UX writing positions, we often tell them to ask for as much as the UX designers make.
UX writing is so new that there isn’t a lot of data about salaries. For this reason, we recently had a look at research carried out and published under this title: an industry survey of 440 UX writers from 25 different countries. What did we discover? Many things — from the most common job titles to whether UX writers were primarily working at agencies or tech companies.
Of most interest to you, though, is probably the fact that junior UX writers earn an average of $75K in the USA, while seniors stand to earn an average of just under $125K. Not bad! Be that as it may, according to Glassdoor, in most cases of the industry employment fields, the average salary of a UX designer is $90.6K — content strategists and UX writers overlap.
Especially, in terms of their career responsibilities — with the former earning $60K a year to be precise. On the same note, according to Neuvoo, a UX writer in California can earn up to $120K a year.
Obviously, these results suggest that as a junior (more so, as our survey suggests), you’ll not expect that kind of salary immediately in your new workplace. In the long term, however, getting into this field now will be worth your while. After all, we also expect the salary of experienced UX writers will easily reach six figures before long — so, put your house in order early!
Final Thoughts:
All in all, creating a UX writing plan will help you stay consistent throughout all of your web content. Just make sure that you use the tips and principles from this article to help you create your own UX writing strategy and follow it closely. Whilst, keeping in mind, more and more companies are realizing the value of having a dedicated UX writer as part of the product team.
As a result, more and more positions for UX writers are being created and filled. For example, Booking.com has gone from 20 UX writers to 60 in less than a year, and Wix has a writing guild with about the same number of full-time writers. Still, others are realizing that having a single writer in the product team and a few in the marketing department just isn’t enough.
Eventually, this is driving an exponential increase in the hiring of UX writers. If you put 10 UX writers together in a room, you’ll likely find you’ve got 10 people from 10 different professional backgrounds. One might come from a background in journalism, while another has a Ph.D. in Physics (one of UX Writing Hub’s UX writing students actually).
We even know an architect designer who now works as a full-time creative UX writing expert! Precisely, this is because creative UX writing is a relatively new discipline, but one with a large and growing demand. As such, we see people from a wide range of backgrounds who are getting into a field that presents them with so many opportunities.
Other Additional Resource References:
- Here Is How To Amplify Your UX Writing Skills
- What You Should Know About User-Centered Design (UCD)
- The Topmost 15 Free Content Design Tools You Should Be Using
- The Best UX Writing Courses (And How To Pick The Right One)
- What Is A Full-Stack Designer? Plus The Steps To Get Started
That’s it! Everything to know about the best route to take your next creative UX writing and UI design projects. But, if you’ll need more support, you can always Consult Us at any time and then let us know how we can help you. You are also welcome to share your additional thoughts, recommendations, suggestions, or even contribution questions in our comments section.
About The Author
Lillie Jenkins is a creative copywriter and content writer. She has worked as a copywriter since graduating from school — so her writing skills are well-honed. Uniquely, she writes publications in such fields as marketing, business, education, and personal life. More than writing she loves to travel and read professional literature. Just send her an email to talk more.
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