Writing Content for Usability

Designers and developers, who are not trained as copywriters, are often tasked with writing content for their websites. As the saying goes, everyone is a publisher thanks to the Internet.

Regardless, writing content can seem like a daunting task and can be downright stressful. Thankfully, the Internet can help you with that!

I just listened to a podcast from UIE Brain Sparks channel called “Writing Content for Usability”, originally aired on 4/20/2012. You can listen to it on this link.

The show host Adam Churchill interviews Steph Hay, a prominent writer and content strategist in D.C. In this podcast, Hay provides practical tips on how anyone can write compelling content on their website.

Here are the 7 Things I Learned from it:

1. Answer below two questions before my website project begins:

• What do we want our users to KNOW? – This will help me immediately identify my audience and what I must express to them to care about what I am saying.
• What do we want our users to DO? – Once I answer the first question, is then the ultimate conversion point. It will give me an idea of what actions I want my visitors to take on my website.

2. Take the below four steps to writing compelling content for web and mobile experiences:

    Step 1. Focus on audience, medium and network.

• Audience: Imagine that my user is the person sitting across the table from me, versus a wide demographic of folks from age 18 to 35. Being able to focus on a single person eases the writing process because it will help me vividly imagine the user’s experience.
• Medium: Think about which medium of communication will be best. Is it a homepage, a website, or on Twitter or blog? Then, use additional media to enhance my message.  For example, email can help tell a story and compliment my message. This can take some of the pressure off of me having to write everything.
• Network: Consider the folks who will help influence my message to my target audience.
• It’s important to have this brainstorming process before I write a single word of content!

Step 2. Write the content.

• Ensure that my content displays these four characteristics: helpful, meaningful, result-oriented, and confident.
• Content that has above four characteristics helps a user to take an action.

Step 3. Review for consistency.

• It is critical to go back and make sure everything that I wrote is consistent in voice, structure and tone.

Step 4. Intrigue the user to do something next!

• Compelling content intrigues the user to take an action. Make sure my content encourages people take the next action and be very clear about where I want them to go next.

3. Learn the difference between ‘Marketing Content’ and ‘Usable Content’:

• ‘Marketing content’ is the content creation and testing proces itself.
• ‘Usable content’ is the outcome of the above process.
• ‘Marketing content’ and ‘Usable content’ do not describe where content shows up. It is much deeper.
  Example 1. It is not exactly correct to think that “marketing” is your home page content and “usability” means button content or call to action.
  Example 2. Marketing content is not just the headline on a home page or about page content. Usable content isn’t just a button nomenclature or call to action in the side bar.
• ‘Marketing content’ is really any content that is written for a user. ‘Usable content’ is the outcome of effective marketing content because more users take action and the right action that I want them to take.

4. Understand how uncompelling content is created (unmeanigful, unhelpful, no result-oriented, and not confident).

• Most marketing content is written by someone who hasn’t actually spoken to the typical end user.
• That person writes blindly based on what she considers to be interesting rather than by using the kind of language and the end user seeks.
• When users read marketing content that is well written – users appreciate it because they think you get them. This is the core of usable content!

5. Memorize this wonderful quote by Dr. Flint McLauglin, “When you’re thinking about marketing copy versus content, CLARITY always trumps PERSUASION.”

6. Bring every deliverable back to the audience outcomes and goals. Who am I speaking to, what awesome things do I promise to the users that our competitors do not, and what do we want our users to do?

7. Remember that my content must help the user to make a decision.

References

For more tips on web site and product usability, I highly recommend that you bookmark UIE’s website www.uie.com.