{"id":1217,"date":"2019-08-26T11:26:44","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T11:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2023-03-01T14:50:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T14:50:43","slug":"ux-writing-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/ux-writing-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the true cost of content design and UX writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This content about the cost of UX Writing was <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/productvision.pl\/2018\/czy-warto-poswiecac-czas-i-pieniadze-na-projektowanie-tresci\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">originally published in Polish<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the product management blog &#8211;\u00a0 <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/productvision.pl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ProductVision.pl<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/ux-writing-vs-content-design\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Content design\/UX writing<\/a> for some people may look like unnecessary work. From the layman\u2019s perspective, content designers may look like they are just doing excessive text editing. Pampering their words. Clinging to unnecessary details. And we know the Silicon Valley motto that &#8220;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">done<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is better than <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">perfect<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,&#8221; right? On numerous teams, this leads to saying \u2013 we already have some text, let&#8217;s go to production. Sound familiar? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">?<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem with determining the value of content design<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/the-rise-of-content-design\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Content design<\/a> is a way to find out about the language and mental model of your users, and turning that knowledge into words that strengthen the product user experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But content design is not free. When you have UX writers aboard (I will use the term interchangeably with &#8220;content designer&#8221;), you have to pay them. Whether you have a single UX writer or an entire team, it\u2019s a noticeable cost to the organization. In addition to the added salaries, content design costs time. And it&#8217;s not only the time of writers. It\u2019s the time of the project team, the development team, the testers, the product managers. The cost may be, for example, the time required for extra tests, delays, or a prolonged manufacturing process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks to UX writers, though, more and more products communicate better. The number of good examples of streamlined communication is growing. You can find blog posts on how to create \u201cmicrocopy\u201d (text in the user interface) and even galleries of beautiful microcopy examples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem with such collections, especially when you&#8217;re concerned with costs, is that the collection curators often subjectively choose examples that, taken out of the context, offer no information about how they work for the product or whether they affect user experience or revenue. I have yet to meet a microcopy collection that describes how each example affects conversion or retention. We also learn nothing about the content designer decisions behind the samples. And they don&#8217;t mention money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how should you know if well-crafted communication makes sense (and money)? That is what I hope to show you here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The examples I collect in this article highlight the value rising directly from words. You can find more examples on the Internet where careful work on words, and especially on words in the UI, have brought spectacular financial results. For one, see <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/articles.uie.com\/three_hund_million_button\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jared Spool\u2019s description<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of how changing the Register button to Continue, together with a slight change in the purchase process, resulted in a 45% sales increase. This change of copy and design resulted in an extra $300,000,000 (300 million!) within the first 12 months after the changes had been introduced. The cost of such modifications isn&#8217;t always low, because it requires the entire product team to work. I omit cases where complete forms, pages, and interactions, together with microcopy, were redesigned. I want to emphasize what happens when you fiddle only with the text.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One phrasal verb<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When passengers were taking their seats on Flight 6901 in Beijing 25 years ago, they had no idea they were stepping into history (as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/China_Northern_Airlines_Flight_6901\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">described in Wikipedia<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). When the machine started to descend to the destination airport at \u00dcr\u00fcmqi-Diwopu, the automatic pilot stopped working. The captain of the plane tried to correct the excessive rate of descent manually. He focused on the cockpit instruments and instructions displayed on the on-board computer. Unfortunately, at the moment the <\/span><b>pull up<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> message appeared, the pilot didn&#8217;t react and the plane crashed. Of the 102 people on board, 12 died. An analysis of the black box recording indicated that the pilot, instead of making the suggested maneuver, asked the first officer what \u201cpull up\u201d means.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1222\" src=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image1.jpg\" alt=\"boeing 747 (ux writing cost)\" width=\"871\" height=\"555\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image1.jpg 640w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image1-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 871px) 100vw, 871px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Photo: Wikipedia. Sister-ship to the accident aircraft<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pull up<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a phrasal verb. Let&#8217;s assume phrasal verbs can be liberally classified as idioms. Something that cannot be easily translated or explained. Something that is mostly clear to native speakers only. Non-native speakers of English usually have problems with this type of construction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A little consideration of words could have prevented this tragedy. A flight crew with poor command of English could have reacted differently. If only the computer had displayed <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">go up<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">! Or if the design team had done some testing with various groups of people. After all, American airplanes (like the crashed McDonnell-Douglas) are not piloted only by Americans. Unfortunately, two seemingly insignificant words contributed to the loss of human lives.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One apostrophe<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cardiac arrest. The blood stops circulating. The brain gets less oxygen. There&#8217;s panic all around. Someone calls for an ambulance. Every second counts. The emergency dispatcher asks about the situation, you answer, and the clock keeps ticking. The dispatcher&#8217;s question matters. The Belmont paramedic team found that by saying the same sentence, only in two different ways, you could save or lose 9 seconds throughout the conversation. They asked:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Tell me what has happened.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">or<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Tell me what&#8217;s happened.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It turns out that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tell me what&#8217;s happened<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> makes people focus directly on what happened just before they grabbed the telephone. The conversation is shorter and more informative. When contractions are expanded, callers tend to tell stories, often about the entire day, full of unnecessary details.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s amazing what grammar can do! Do you remember your English classes? We were told not to use contractions in writing and official conversations. Because it&#8217;s colloquial, the &#8220;low register.&#8221; Not suitable for the communication of educated people. Life proves teachers wrong. If someone didn&#8217;t bother to pay attention to the way you speak, it would be harder to save time and rescue lives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.watoday.com.au\/national\/western-australia\/every-breath-you-take-every-move-they-make-counts-for-wa-paramedics-20180329-p4z6zp.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One comma<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five million dollars. That&#8217;s the cost of the settlement Oakhurst Dairy company had to make with the suppliers of their products. The reason? A missing comma in the contract describing the obligations of suppliers. A very special missing comma \u2013 the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among native speakers on the North American continent, there is still an ardent discussion about whether this is a stylistic or semantic tool. Oakhurst Dairy learned painfully that a serial comma changes the meaning of the sentence. This is the sensitive part (my emphasis):<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, <\/span><\/i><b><i>packaging for shipment or distribution<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211; Agricultural produce;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211; Meat and fish products; and<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211; Perishable foods.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the company&#8217;s drivers, &#8220;packaging for shipment or distribution&#8221; meant a single operation, not two different tasks. Drivers transport products, they don&#8217;t take care of packaging. Therefore, they demanded payment for an extra job. The case went to court, which recognized the suppliers&#8217; point and thus showed that the comma affects the meaning of the sentence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They could have avoided this legal trouble. Probably the Oakhurst Dairy writers and proofers assumed commas like that don\u2019t change the meaning. No one assessed the impact of punctuation in a complex legal text.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today some product designers in their <a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/content-style-guides\/\">style guides<\/a> recommend the Oxford comma (including <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/emmyf\/buzzfeed-style-guide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BuzzFeed<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/polaris.shopify.com\/content\/grammar-and-mechanics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shopify<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, US government agency <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/content-guide.18f.gov\/punctuation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">18f<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). If you deliver your product in English, using the Oxford comma consistently is worth the effort. In my experience, this type of comma positively affects the way non-English speakers comprehend your text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/09\/us\/oxford-comma-maine.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two personal pronouns<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Unbounce company tested how their call to action (CTA) influences the number of started free trials. One of the buttons said<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start my free 30 day trial<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the other said<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start your 30 day trial.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How did they perform? The company saw a 90% increase in the click-through rate with the<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Start my free 30 day<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">trial<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> copy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1223 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image3.png\" alt=\"My trial vs your trial (ux writing cost)\" width=\"560\" height=\"543\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image3.png 560w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image3-300x291.png 300w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image3-24x24.png 24w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image3-48x48.png 48w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Illustration: unbounce.com<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They did a similar test for another product. The buttons said:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create my account<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create your account.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create my account<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> version performed 24.9% better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1224 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image5.png\" alt=\"create my account vs create your account (ux writing cost)\" width=\"560\" height=\"357\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image5.png 560w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image5-300x191.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Illustration: unbounce.com<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The battle was between &#8220;my&#8221; and &#8220;your&#8221; &#8212; two simple pronouns. It may seem absurd to think that such a tiny change could improve customer engagement so dramatically. But every button click takes potential customers a step further in the conversion funnel and closer to sales results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unfortunately, Unbounce did not say who the tested people were (for example, how well they spoke English). Without this data, it&#8217;s difficult to define the precise reasons why the pronouns matter so much. But we can assume that the call to action containing the word &#8220;my&#8221; in some way <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@jsaito\/is-this-my-interface-or-yours-b09a7a795256\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">strengthens the sense of ownership<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in users. Maybe they think &#8220;this is for me&#8221; or &#8220;it&#8217;s already mine.&#8221; One thing we can say is that devoting attention to every single word and testing even trivial changes can be of considerable business importance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/unbounce.com\/a-b-testing\/failed-ab-test-results\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One sentence<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A payment form. Zero optional fields. Customers provided information such as a credit card number, CVV, name, and address. The address field was labeled <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Billing address<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. So people entered their data, the data looked good, but the payment didn\u2019t go through. Result: 5-10% of transactions weren&#8217;t finalized. Customers spent their money on competing sites instead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fortunately, a patch worked. A very simple thing. One sentence added:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be sure to enter the billing address associated with your credit card<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boom! The problems disappeared. The company started to earn more money in an instant. A single explanatory line was enough to communicate clearly and overcome cognitive bias. The seller assumed people would understand what kind of address was required. But they didn&#8217;t. People saw the &#8220;address&#8221; field and they entered their current address instead of the one associated with their credit card. No wonder payments didn&#8217;t go through.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1225 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image2.png\" alt=\"Microcopy helper example (ux writing cost)\" width=\"455\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image2.png 455w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image2-300x202.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 455px) 100vw, 455px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Illustration: Blog bokardo.com<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bokardo.com\/archives\/writing-microcopy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One word<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Expedia had a similar problem. An analysis of their purchase process data showed that there was some inconsistency between the number of completed payment forms and their actual profit. People entered the payment details, their name, credit card numbers, etc. Most likely they were going to pay. They took the time to fill in the form correctly. However, no transaction followed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The form had a field labeled <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Company<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It was placed just under the name and surname of the card holder. It turned out that a high number of customers entered the name of their bank there. Consequently, when they proceeded to the field with the address, they also entered the bank&#8217;s data, when they were actually expected to type in the name of their company and their home address. However, the context of the payment fooled people. As a result, the address didn\u2019t pass validation because it wasn&#8217;t the address of the cardholder. Communication failed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Expedia removed the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Company<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> field. Effect? An additional $12 million in revenue per year! Not to mention the diminished cost of supporting customers who stopped asking for help after the payment failed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1226 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image4.jpg\" alt=\"Form comparison (ux writing cost)\" width=\"580\" height=\"328\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image4.jpg 580w, https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/image4-300x170.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Illustration: Digital marketing blog<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.duncanjonesnz.com\/case-study-expedias-12-million-a-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, does it matter how we choose words?<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every day, a lot of our daily actions boil down to how we weigh our words. In <a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/conversational-design\/\">conversation with our partners<\/a>, some words hurt and some words soothe. Some words help and some words only make things worse. It\u2019s the same at work, when you talk to your managers or subordinates (for example, by giving feedback). And when we talk to children, proper choice of language is essential (as we are reminded every time children pick up inappropriate phrases and use them in the least appropriate situations).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the importance of weighing our words tends to be less obvious when we turn to digital communications. Partly, this is for historical reasons. The first texts in computer interfaces were created by coders who did not necessarily think in terms of psycholinguistics when they were squeezing words into their interfaces. And with all the usual design adventures and day-to-day implementation struggles to distract us , it has always been hard to maintain focus on using the precise language to express the product vision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps more than anything else, the problem with screen text is that we write how we were taught to write. People tend to automatically switch to an unnatural writing voice when they don&#8217;t see their listeners, which is exactly what our schools taught us to do. We were told to use a completely different sort of language, a different voice, when we wrote our dissertations, essays, letters, and so on, and we were told to never use colloquial language. So we write as if we forget that there are people listening and reading on the other side of the cable.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What does this mean for our products?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The user interface isn&#8217;t just a sequence of neatly arranged objects. It&#8217;s communication with people. The same rules apply here as in a face-to-face conversation. The fact that we do not see the people we are aiming our message at forces us to focus much more on what we say and how we say it. In the digital world, we cannot use gesture or facial expressions. To a limited extent, we can only operate with the tone of voice. Words, punctuation, and grammar are as crucial as colors, shapes, and page layout.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It wasn&#8217;t the machine that contributed to the death of 12 people in China. It was a poorly selected verb.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It isn&#8217;t space technology that dispatches ambulances faster in Australia. It&#8217;s grammar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It isn\u2019t colors or button size that converts people to Unbounce. It&#8217;s their choice of words.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The examples selected for this article show that tiny things often ignored and downplayed during the design process can have a colossal impact. In these specific cases, dismissing careful word choice with &#8220;it&#8217;s just copy&#8221; essentially comes down to &#8220;it&#8217;s only 12 million dollars&#8221; or &#8220;it&#8217;s only 12 people.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meaning (of words) has (business) meaning. This is why you need to design content. This is why you should take the time to study how your words work in the world. You need to check whether <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/readabilityguidelines.wikidot.com\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the message is readable<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. You need to make sure the language you use is similar to that used by your users. Sometimes it requires going through UX interviews or examining records of customer support calls. Sometimes it means conducting additional A\/B testing. And sometimes it requires a few other magic tricks that content designers have up their sleeves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Please note that the examples provided here also show that changing microcopy is one of the fastest ways to improve a site, especially in SaaS products, where text changes on the platform can be done right away. A redesign can take a lot of time &#8211; it requires wireframes, acceptance tests, and implementation. The addition or deletion of a text is a much smaller operation and at times returns unexpectedly good results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think what can happen when content people work systemically. For example, when your system <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/NpJk2ZK88Tw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">gains extra strength from content strategy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Content design is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.braintraffic.com\/blog\/new-thinking-brain-traffics-content-strategy-quad\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">part of the content strategy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In the discussed context, it is the most important, because it is visible and experienced directly by users. If you manage to integrate content design into your product manufacturing process, then who knows? Maybe you&#8217;ll also end up with an extra 300 million dollars in revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Further reading<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/ux-writing-examples\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">35 Examples of Great UX Writing To Spark Inspiration<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/error-message-examples\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Best 10 Examples And Guidelines For Error Messages<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/15-inspiring-content-design-portfolios\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Show Your Stuff: 15 Content Design Portfolios That Inspire<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Content design for some people may look like unnecessary work. From the layman\u2019s perspective, content designers may look like they are just doing excessive text editing. Pampering their words. Clinging to unnecessary details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tpgb_global_settings":"","_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"acf":{"descriptions":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is the true cost of content design and UX writing - UX WRITING HUB<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Content designers may look like they are just doing excessive text editing. But that&#039;s not the case. Read here about the cost of ux writing.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uxwritinghub.com\/ux-writing-cost\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is the true cost of content design and UX writing - UX WRITING HUB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Content designers may look like they are just doing excessive text editing. But that&#039;s not the case. 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