4 reasons why you should involve your copywriter in user research
Real users don’t know what ‘lorem ipsum’ is
So you’re about to do some research. You want to know what your customers think of your new and exciting product or feature. You’ve based your product decisions on data, you’ve chosen the right target audience and the best location to try out your sexy new thingamajig. You just know they’re going to love it, right?
But you’ve forgotten one thing.
The words.
Or more importantly the person that writes the words. We go by a few names; UX writer, copywriter, content strategist (some call us word wizards but we don’t judge).
“Oh, but this is just a prototype! We’ll get some good copy at a later stage, you know when we’re building the real thing”, I hear you say. “It doesn’t matter yet, we just want to see if they like the product.”
Wait, what?
This is too often the scenario in product teams. I’ve seen teams travel to the ends of the globe and back to test something with their desired customers only to come back sheepishly with “for some reason, they didn’t understand what we wanted them to do”. This is probably because they were distracted by typos or missing words. Maybe they didn’t understand where clicking the call-to-action would take them next or how they landed on this page in the first place. I’ve seen prototypes with unpronounceable or irrelevant product names leave customers utterly confused. I’ve even seen prototypes written entirely in lorem ipsum. Yeah, go figure.
Your copywriter’s input early on makes all the difference.
As product people we often analyze data, ideate a solution and start building an MVP, fast. Sadly, our tendency to go straight to high-fidelity prototypes means that we often forget that real customers don’t know this is placeholder text. They can’t guess what our products do or know straight away how they work or why they should care. Sleek design and intuitive logic won’t matter when the words (or lack of) don’t guide our customers seamlessly through whatever wonderful experience we wanted them to have in the first place.
How to involve your copywriter in user research
- Make sure the designer and copywriter work together on the user flow. Identify the user journey, create personas and try to spot potential issues. There’s nothing worse than writing sub-optimal copy because I have no idea what the user is supposed to do next. Writers need context.
- Have your copywriter help with the interview script. If you don’t ask the right questions, you’ll miss the moment to get the answers you need. Your writer can help you write these in a non-biased way.
- Make sure your copywriter actually writes the words your customer will read. This sounds obvious but lorem ipsum helps no-one.
- Invite your copywriter on that trip! If they can’t go make sure they have access to videos or your interview notes. Hearing and seeing first-hand what someone thinks about the words you wrote is invaluable to writing intuitive copy.
Lesson from Athens: Copy is just as important as the features
Recently I went on a research trip to Athens with one of my product teams. We wanted feedback on a new landing page that would help our partners navigate several features from one central place. As a copywriter, collaborating with the designer and product owner on the user flow and essential components before the trip was invaluable.
“Our research trip was a success, in large part due to the copy. Even if your product creates a lot of value for your users, unless they understand how it will solve their problems, anything you build will have a hard time being adopted.” — Brian McCabe, Product Owner.
We conducted two online sessions before our trip and seeing the responses from partners helped form my copy for the final prototype we tested. We spoke with twenty partners over two days and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Partners not only understood what we were creating and why, they gave us valuable improvement points that made building our first MVP virtually seamless.
4 reasons you’ll really want to do this
1. Save time and money. You won’t waste time explaining what your product is. Users will get it quickly and be able to give you feedback faster. User research sessions are expensive and short on time so make sure you get the best out of them. You want them to critique your concept not your grammar.
2. Identify real pain points. User-focused copy and design will help a customer understand and articulate what it is they love or hate about your product. You can then choose to make improvements that really make a difference. Some of those improvements may even be copy. (We never said we were perfect.)
3. Reputation matters. Frustrating copy leads to frustrated customers and less-than intuitive copy stops users in their tracks. If the experience is bad enough, they may never use your product again.
4. Better quality. Clear and easy-to-understand copy helps prevent usability problems. It avoids spending time and resources on things that don’t work or customers don’t want. Get it right from the start and you’ll avoid problems down the road.
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