Why the Words You Choose Matter to UX

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We never really finish content that’s confusing. We glaze over, skim it for anything that feels familiar, and probably return to search until we find a source that speaks our language.

Words matter. And choosing the wrong words in your site’s navigation, microcopy, calls-to-action, and body content will negatively impact your user’s experience on many levels.

Why Words Matter in Navigation

In a HubSpot survey, more than 76% of consumers say that websites making it “easy to find what I want” is the most important factor in a website design. So what does this mean? It means your website navigation — also known as your information architecture, or IA — is essential to your visitors’ experiences. It’s how they travel from page to page, engage with your content, and ideally, make contact with your brand.

When navigation doesn’t meet their expectations, they’ll often return to a search engine and find a website that makes sense.

If you’re in the process of rebuilding your site’s navigation, keep a few pointers in mind when deciding the format and language you’re going to use:

• Use language that’s familiar to your audience, not your organization. Stakeholders might claim to know what’s best for the bottom line, but they usually don’t know how to speak to the person on the other side of the screen. Whatever you’re selling or offering your visitors, make it clear with language they use. Check your site search keywords to help you get an idea for what your audience is seeking most.
• Keep it simple, but not vague. Long navigation items might work in some designs (so always collaborate with your designer first) but to play it safe, use simple terminology for your navigation without being vague. “Services” might work OK if you’re Bob’s Plumbing, but “Residential Services” and “Commercial Services” might be a little more clear.
• Focus on the top tasks. It might seem valuable to shove “About Us” and “Meet Our Team” in the main navigation, but the truth is, your site visitors are likely trying to find information about your products, services, and pricing rather than your mission statement or company history. Use secondary or footer navigations to keep this information accessible, but not front and center.
• Make it easy to find your navigation. It can feel exciting to try a bold, new idea with your navigation’s placement. But studies show users still largely expect navigation to run along the top of a website, so getting creative or artsy with it may abandon the audience you’re trying to connect.

Why Words Matter in Microcopy

We encounter microcopy in many places in our everyday life. From seemingly annoying pop-ups asking us to subscribe to newsletters, to error messages alerting us of a potential problem, microcopy is that small but effective content trying to send a message.

The words you use and the tone you take in microcopy can make a big difference in your audience’s trust in your brand.

“Some” error? And what form? This is poorly structured microcopy that wasn’t tested (or designed) between content and design.

Whether you’re trying to be funny, cute, serious, or straightforward, microcopy — when done well — can quickly convey your brand style while helping your user do what comes next. But when done poorly, it can go off the rails.

Props for the pop culture reference, but this seems pretty desperate and not quite appropriate to joke about, especially in light of their tumultuous divorce.

Here are some tips when choosing words for your microcopy:

• Agree on the tone of voice. If your organization doesn’t have a brand style guide, create one and set a tone for your marketing efforts, including microcopy. Knowing the tone and style you want to convey will help shape the way you tackle copy of all sizes.
• Write with emotion. Depending on the situation, microcopy may require more empathy or emotion with your user. It’s best to be honest and human when writing microcopy — the more human it feels, the more successful it will be.
• Be transparent. Don’t hide clarity behind microcopy that’s trying too hard to be cute. Transparency is always more appreciated by users than a catchy phrase or rhyming scheme. Use words and phrases that make sense to users and can’t be confused or miscommunicated easily.
• Be direct. Don’t get wordy and lengthy with microcopy. ‘Micro’ is the first part of that word for a reason. Be simple and straightforward. Urgency is always a good method when pushing for conversions. Directness is key. Rather than a vague term like “Submit,” go with “Request a Quote Now!”

Surely there’s an easier way to say this.

Why Words Matter in Body Copy

My career is in healthcare marketing, and there’s no place that’s easier to see where content can get confusing for users than explaining a medical condition or treatment.

Words in body copy are the meat to each page of your website. They’re what users read to understand what you have to offer. They’re what search spiders use to crawl your site and index it with other like-topic pages.

Thanks to Google and other search engines’ algorithm changes over the last decade, content that’s unique, written clearly, and focuses on the user is the most beneficial and performs better in search.

• Have a style guide and use it. Like the calls to action, microcopy, and other content-driven efforts of your digital presence, your body copy should adhere to a style guide, which includes voice and tone. Your style guide, voice, and tone should be consistent across the content you create, as it’s an equal part of the foundation of your brand.
• Write to your users, not at them. Speak to your users directly. There’s usually only one person on the other side of the screen, so talk to them as if you’re having a conversation. Use the words they use. Be loose and friendly, as your style guide allows. Don’t talk over their heads — they don’t deserve that.
• Skip the jargon. Your internal marketing-speak or organizational structure is of no interest to a user who’s simply looking for a product, service, or answer to a question. Users are, by and large, impatient. If you stuff jargon in your content, you won’t only lose their attention, you’ll lose their conversion. Use language that users understand, even if it underwhelms your stakeholders.
• Simplify, simplify. Your web copy isn’t a term paper from college. “Kill your darlings,” my journalism instructors told me. You may craft a beautiful sentence or prose, but web content should be direct and easy to understand. In healthcare, we focus on health literacy for the user on the other side of the screen — and you should focus on that, too.
• Keywords still matter. Just because search loves user-first content doesn’t mean keywords don’t have a place. A quick keyword research as you develop great body content can benefit both you and the search engine indexing.

There’s a reason WebMD dominates the health search results. Its simple, user literacy-first approach to healthcare content makes it easy to understand and digest (no pun intended).

Measure, test, measure, test…

As you build navigation, microcopy, and body content, keep an eye on the measurements. Build tracking with Google Tag Manager and other analytic tools in your webmaster toolbox to keep an eye on visitors, bounce rates, page duration, and conversions. If you notice areas that are dipping, or not meeting expectations, change it up.

The moral of the story is that your users are what determine the value of your site: They’re the ones who click, engage, learn, share, and convert. If you don’t write content that’s easy for them to understand, they’ll find what they need elsewhere. Be their answer — it’s the right thing to do.