Three myths about microcopy

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. A few things about microcopy that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

“It only matters for big sites”

The small words carry a lot of the experience. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped.

“Our platform handles it”

Reassurance next to an action reduces hesitation. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

In practice

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. 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.