Microcopy for small teams

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Most advice about microcopy assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

What to keep

The small words carry a lot of the experience. 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.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

Where to start

Reassurance next to an action reduces hesitation. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

How to tell if yours is fine

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
• The small words carry a lot of the experience — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.