UX copywriting is a design job. Why? Because a great user experience design writing is as much important as great visual design. Yes, I said visual design. By that, I basically mean your UI. So, whenever I talk about design in general, I mean the combination of great UI, UX, and, of course, writing. Think yourself, what’s the point of designing a super-cool button when you cannot think of an effective call-to-action. Will your users click on a button like that? I am not sure…

Not convinced yet? Bear with me. Below are a few concrete reasons WHY you need copywriting in user experience design. And by that, I also mean that you had better hire a UX-oriented writer. Or, you could try to draft the UX copy of your product yourself. And then hand it to an experienced writer for fine-tuning. Below are the answers to your WHYs:

Because writers are designers in some sense

Just like designers play with colors, shapes, and icons to create great UI/UX, writers play with words and sentence structures to create an outstanding text. Let’s look at a few examples:

While designers and developers are more laconic, writers are more expressive and descriptive. They can often help solve design problems with words.

Because good UX writing helps maintain consistency

Copywriting in user experience design does not only mean adding feelings to the design. It also means maintaining the consistency between various product elements. UX writers, for example, can see the big picture and can fill in the missing parts to make the user experience more holistic.

Just like designers, good writers create their own style guides for different products and stick to them.

For example, you can never see “Oops! Something went wrong!” and “The application has encountered an unknown error” in one product. While these two texts have the same meaning, they are stylistically very different from each other. And a good UX writer will never ever put them together in one product.

Because writers are good at grammar and punctuation

UX writing also involves paying attention to detail. In a good UX copy, you will hardly ever find a misplaced comma or a misspelled word. The quality of the text is the number one thing that UX copywriters take care of.

And if you ever ask if language matters, I will definitely say YES. Because many users might freak out by seeing typos or inconsistency within the app. And it all can come down to trust. As soon as they start noticing low-quality writing, they might abandon the app.

Because writing can make you answer design questions you have never encountered before

Usually, we know that we understand something when we are able to explain it to someone else. This is pretty much true with product design, too. Sometimes a product/UX writer might find a feature difficult to explain. They will then ask the designer to explain it. And the truth is that sometimes it is nearly impossible to explain a feature. What do you think this means? Yes, the design is not intuitive enough. So, instead of torturing the writer, you simply go back to the design and start improving it.

So, you can see that UX writing can even pose usability questions and can make you come up with a simpler solution.

Did I miss anything?

User experience design and UX copywriting are two really broad topics. And I am sure I have missed something. Let me know what you think about the new buzzword UX copywriting. Do you think product teams should hire writers or it’s better to assign the writing to the designer? Hit a comment below. I’ll be glad to answer!