My 1st year as a solo content designer
Here’s a summary of my transition from UX Writing to content design, the challenges I faced working solo for the first time, my collaboration with product designers, and how I learned to use data to improve my content decisions.
Table of contents:
General
- What is Casavo
- Why I chose Casavo
- My job description
- First UX writer, then content designer
- First in a team, then solo
Day-to-day
- What I do in a day
- How I prioritize
- Collaboration with product designers
- Use of data
- How I keep learning
- Career path
- Evangelization
In retrospect
General
What is Casavo
Casavo is the next-generation European platform that matches home sellers’ needs with homebuyers’ desires through an integrated and personalized experience.
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Why I chose Casavo
I joined Casavo in September 2022 as a content designer after spending about a year and a half at Doctolib as a UX writer.
I transitioned from an international team of 3 UX writers and a UX Writing manager to a team consisting solely of me. My challenge was to establish content design from scratch.
Since Casavo is an Italian company, I also couldn’t wait to work for the first time ever in my native language!
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My job description
My job description is divided into 6 main groups:
- Lead content design effort across products, support design and product teams in the day-to-day activities
- Build and maintain content system
- Support marketing and product marketing positioning and transactional messages
- Partner with Designers on any UX-related topics
- Support product localization efforts
- Lead content community of practice
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First UX writer, then content designer
When I was hired, I requested a change in my job title from “UX Writer” to “Content Designer.”
Having the term “designer” in my job title meant also that I had to learn more about UX, UI, and design as a whole, and step out of my comfort zone (aka, writing microcopy).
I was not hired to write. I was hired to design thanks to words.
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First in a team, then solo
Initially, I was worried about not having colleagues with the same specialization to share my challenges. However, this change pushed me closer to the product designers. Instead of brainstorming with fellow content designers when my copy needed adjustment, I started discussing it directly with the product manager or designer. In this way, they better understood why it was taking me so long to write copy.
And you can always connect with colleagues outside your workplace. Many people are eager to exchange ideas, seek feedback, and ensure they’re on the right track — especially in content design, as we’re mainly lone wolves. To foster this, I initiated a weekly meetup with 4–5 content designers. We discussed our daily hurdles, workloads, horror stories, processes, portfolios, and more (hello UX Writing gang 🐙).
Without a direct supervisor who deeply understands your role, you bear more responsibility for your growth and success. Prioritizing tasks and identifying the right stakeholders become crucial. You must clarify your role to others. In my view, working independently serves as a test: you embody the discipline and carry forward what you find valuable from your past experiences and general knowledge.
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Day-to-day
What I do in a day
First thing in the morning, I’ll check my meetings and filter them: Should I go? Am I going just because they invited me? Then, I’ll check the agenda of my product designers in case someone missed adding me. Yes, I’ll randomly show up. Sue me.
Then, I’ll pick 1 or 2 priorities maximum for the day. They will mainly be some work on a design project (user research script, research restitution, wireframe, last copy check,…) or on a content-related project that includes several stakeholders (product glossary workshop, transactional email update to match new product iteration, marketing-product meeting about new USPs).
I might also have some minor or less regular tasks:
- checking previous research to use it to improve the current copy
- helping a product designer on a low-priority project
- posting content design case studies or good practices on a Slack channel
- checking translators’ comments on the new copy to be translated (no, we don’t have a localization manager anymore. Yes, it’s a pity.)
- updating the glossary and track inconsistencies
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How I prioritize
I’m lucky to be allowed to focus only on key projects and tune out the surrounding noise.
I know it’s not the case for everyone. So, if you’re stretched among several projects and your manager wants you to work on it all, check job openings. I mean it.
If it’s a project where I believe I can make a significant contribution, either because the content is complex or the functionality is crucial, then I get involved as soon as the project is mentioned. Being present from the beginning helps me avoid hunting for information later and, most importantly, understand the cross-domain implications. However, this doesn’t mean I’ll be writing screens from day one.
If I cannot prioritize a project, I’m still available to help the product designer during office hours. They know they’ll leave the meeting with more questions than answers. In fact, when a product designer comes to me, it’s often not just for copy issues, but because their design is difficult to explain in words. When it’s the case, we won’t work at all on words, but we’ll rework the page structure and unlock through design what words alone cannot accomplish.
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Collaboration with product designers
Some content designers prefer working from the very beginning with their product designers. That’s not my case. I prefer having some focus time, and then aligning ideas with the product designer.
I often start with a piece of paper, draft wireframes on Figma, and include various screenshots of competitors to convey the kind of information or UI I want to include. I also proudly show product designers that initially, my copy is really bad. By doing so, they feel less vulnerable about experimenting with their own copy, knowing it’s okay to be imperfect.
Then, the product designer and I present our work to each other (divergence), discuss what works and what doesn’t, and try to create a single mockup together (convergence).
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Use of data
At Casavo, data plays a significant role when creating new features or checking the performance of existing ones. In the Tech team, we use Metabase, Lightdash, and FullStory.
Here’s how I use data, as a content designer:
- Monitoring conversion rates
I decided to change a CTA copy from “Show us your house” to “Complete your house profile” in a very tricky and important place in the experience. The seller had just provided us with a ton of information to evaluate their house, but it was too soon to step a foot in the door. I checked it all on staging, and then I tracked the conversion rates.
It made the weekly visit CTA conversion rate spike from 15% to 27%.
- Keeping an eye on the number of events emitted
Once a feature is live, we can check how people interact with it. And update the experience accordingly.
As a seller, I can share my house profile with potential buyers. But we realized that many sellers were not doing this. So, we added an additional screen to understand the problem. We added this question for a limited time and iterated on the experience (and on the copy, obviously) following our sellers’ feedback.
- Identifying the difference between prices
I was reviewing the glossary and noticed that we had too many different price types (asking price, listing price, final selling price, and few others).
So, I asked the data scientist to provide a grid telling me all the prices related to a house: asking price, listing price, closing price, and so on. In so doing, I could better understand how much they differ, and how to present them to users.
In 76% of cases, the asking price is higher than the closing price by about 7.33%. It means sellers have such an intimate connection that they often overestimate the price of their house. So, when asking sellers their asking price, I had to do some education about it.
- A/B tests
I worked on the CTA homepage that lets sellers start their home value estimate.
Competitors’ choices didn’t help me figure out which CTA was better, as each competitor had a different CTA.
As it’s no joke to decide on this CTA wording and our benchmark did not allow us to fairly clear cut, we decided to do some A/B tests and put in the loop the brand marketing manager and the performance marketing manager.
If the traffic is not massive, A/B tests don’t really help us split the difference — but still, they help.
- Simplifying design based on user input
In the valuation flow, we asked sellers when their house was built. However, after analyzing the data, we noticed that a lot of them were entering the decade (e.g., 1980, 1990) instead of the specific year (e.g., 1998). Out of 31,300 valuations, 38.93% of them (12,220) had a construction year ending with a 0.
The data analyst explained to us that the home value estimate doesn’t vary significantly from year to year, considering it focuses more on decades rather than single-year changes.
In the new version, the question is “When was your house built?”, and in the dropdown, there is 1 option per decade (after 2020, 2010–2019, 2000–2009, and so on) to make it easier for sellers to fill in.
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How I keep learning
During my week, I always block Tuesday mornings for education. The whole company does — and it’s life-changing.
I read Medium articles, watch conferences, read books, or talk to colleagues from other companies. I can completely disconnect from Slack and emails without feeling guilty or feeling like I’m not working.
Having this dedicated time allows me to be more aware of what’s happening in the market and helps me find out who is facing similar challenges to mine, without having to reinvent the wheel for each new project.
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Career path
At Casavo, there’s a design career path, but it’s more focused on the role of a product designer. We have several aspects in common, but a significant portion of my work remains outside of it: evangelization, prioritization, and collaboration.
I am creating my own career path: at the beginning of each quarter, I set my goals together with my manager, and at the beginning of each month, I review them to ensure I’m heading in the right direction.
Then, of course, I compare my career path with that of other content designers. There are also some open-source skills grids, such as the one by OpenClassroom. Help yourself!
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Evangelization
Content designers often face the challenge of educating their peers. It’s time-consuming and quite frustrating. It’s like you have to justify your salary. However, it’s crucial for others to understand the value we bring to the team.
I organized workshops and set up a dedicated Slack channel for content design, where I share engaging case studies.
I’m also developing an internal design system that includes content components and guidelines. You have to advocate for it and make sure people can see the point in using them. That’s the hardest part!
I’ve done audits on several Casavo products. They helped product managers and product designers see how a content designer can simplify their work.
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In retrospect
What I did first when I arrived
- Observation: I took the time to observe others working to better understand how I could fit into the collaboration. I attended 1 or 2 sprints without saying a word, but I took notes and drafted a collaboration process.
- Collaboration: I presented an initial collaboration framework to the team. I wanted to integrate content design into UX reviews and existing rituals. For priority tasks, I prioritized async work, I made it clear I have to be invited to all meetings about the task (yes, product designers can help you with that), and I added optional 1:1 meetings with product designers. For low-priority tasks, I limited to existing meetings (UX reviews) to give feedback and give them homework. This process has evolved significantly, but you have to start somewhere!
- Backlog: I created a document to keep track of everything that didn’t make sense to me: processes, terminology, roles, etc. The idea is to create a virtual space where you can jot down everything you don’t understand, and then discuss it point by point with your manager, to help you understand which points have to be prioritized.
- Evangelization: yes, I did the classic “What is content design” workshop. I’m not a big fan of these meetings because they often remain too abstract, and people get bored easily. So, I opted for minimal theory and a lot of practice: I had the team work on the case that got me hired, showed positive and negative examples of content design, and presented before-and-after examples within Casavo for a “wow” effect.
- Audit: to make your colleagues understand what you do, nothing beats a practical project. So, I conducted an audit on the initial flow of seller product flow to show what I could bring to the team. Here’s the detail.
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What I would have done differently
As soon as I arrived, I dived headfirst into Figma files. I wanted my “revenge”: in my previous role, I had almost no time to scribble and try new things on Figma, so I wanted to take my sweet time to work closely with product designers from day 1.
Still, I got too carried away with it. I was so focused on being productive that I neglected an important aspect: communicating with other departments. Your microcopy is pointless if the whole experience is inconsistent.
That’s why in the last few months, I tried to make amends and engage more with marketing, brand, and sales to work on a comprehensive content strategy and ensure that we are all telling the same story to our users. I can’t expect the customer experience to rely solely on my screens, and I need to understand how other content creators discuss it.
For example, user research showed that our sellers want an overview of the whole experience before it even starts. So we are working cross-domain on a specific FAQ about it. We realized we had the same need simultaneously, but we were working in sylos and didn’t realize it beforehand.
I also realized that I can only go so far without a deep understanding of the business: how can I present a business transparently if I don’t fully understand it?
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Conclusions
So here it is. Hope you enjoyed reading this article!
If you have further questions, just send me a LinkedIn message ❤️
You might be interested in:
- Post-mortem: how a sorry email had the best open rate ever reached
- Content design and data: a love story
- 9 actionable tips to improve your UX Writer/Product Designer collaboration
Or check other Casavo stories by my colleagues ✨
