What is it?
Microcopy is a term for all the tiny pieces of copy that help users as they make their way through your website.
Some examples of microcopy are form labels, link and button text, form validation messages and navigation labels.
Why is it important?
Microcopy can be easily overlooked and forgotten about, being left to system defaults. This can make the text very functional and not always informative.
With microcopy usually appearing at the most essential parts of a user journey (e.g. error messages within a payment details form), it can have a big impact on conversion as well as user experience as a whole.
A quick example can be seen with link and button text.
A button containing “Submit” or “View more” is not descriptive. It does not imply what will happen next in the journey.
Changing the text to reflect the next step is more intuitive and can be useful as users don’t always read a page in the order you expect.
In many CRO tests, we have found adjusting microcopy such as this to have a significant effect on the conversion rate of users continuing a journey.
What to do next?
- Carry out a UX audit focusing on microcopy – user recordings can help find areas users struggle with.
- Walk through your user journeys and identify areas of microcopy – is it informative; is it useful; does it help as much as it could?
- Assess what content could be enhanced to be more helpful and to reflect your brands tone.
- Rewrite it and deploy it.
- Speak to us if you need assistance.
