Getting started with microcopy
We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. A short on-ramp to microcopy for teams who have not touched it before.
Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
What it costs to ignore
The small words carry a lot of the experience. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Button and error text deserve real drafting
- Change one thing and measure it
Reassurance next to an action reduces hesitation. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
What this looks like day to day
Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. Three things worth confirming about microcopy before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Reassurance next to an action reduces hesitation — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.