Content Strategy at Cuddle.ai: Part I-Guiding principles.

For the last one year, we designed (and shipped) countless features — big and small. We also shipped numerous improvements across all platform Cuddle.ai supports today — Web, iOS, and Android for the user app & Web for our Command Center (think of it as the admin control).

As our product kept evolving, certain issues started surfacing.

• For instance, an error message due to a poor network would read differently on iOS than the Web product.
• Different designers working on feature releases in different teams would tweak the copy separately — hence, creating numerous instances of different content structure, hierarchy in UI and worse — different product nomenclature. E.g. CTAs ‘Track’ and ‘Track this’ were shipped by different teams at the same time that were visible on different screens.
• The structure of messaging too wasn’t spared! A warning message structure would read like:
  Are you sure you want to delete this Notification?
  Yes/ Cancel
  &
  Delete this Trackboard?
  Yes, delete/ No, don’t delete.

But to an extent, we were okay since our user base was small enough and it wasn’t the right time to invest a lot of time and efforts in what goes as a part of copy text on our interface.

Then came a point where we saw the following messages across our product and platforms for the same feature:

Track this answer?
Track this question?

Just to give you the context, one of the features of Cuddle is Ask, where user can ask any question about his business data and get an answer. He can add that answer to his Trackboard (Cuddle’s dashboard) for daily use. Now as a team, multiple people across functions were using both the terminologies, Product: Track your answers, Marketing: Ask questions and Track them. This was bound to happen as we didn’t define any structure or terminology which everyone should follow. This is when we realised that a strategy for content and frameworks were required.

Next, was to highlight the importance of doing this exercise to the other stakeholders for the product, including designers, developers, product managers, sales team and the CEO. This article will take you through the importance of having a content strategy, and the next one will highlight how we did this exercise for Cuddle and how we ensured all the stakeholder follow the frameworks moving forward.

This article is Part I of the series and it covers the following topics:-

01. Goals and outcomes

Defining simple goals of this exercise and creating tangible outcomes that one should keep track of.

02. UX writing?

Defining the importance of UX writing and how this differs from typical copywriting with examples.

03. First-principles of writing content

Defining basic guidelines and do’s and don’t to follow while writing content for your product, with examples.

In part II, we talk about how we did this exercise for Cuddle and how we ensured all the stakeholder follow the frameworks moving forward.

Content Strategy at Cuddle.ai: Part II-Frameworks and solutions

Goals and outcomes

UX writing

Using fancy words to bring people to a product is normal. Using the same words to keep them is not.

Good microcopy (a little piece of text on the interface) can help users navigate and do stuff on a website. It shows care and understanding about their feelings at every step of the user flow.

UX writers create positive experiences from the moment users visit a website or open an app. They mend the pain points of their user flow with words.

It’s very important to understand the distinction between writing for sales and writing for interfaces.

Below two examples show how product content can have direct outcomes on your business.

First Principles

Below are certain basic guidelines and do’s and don’t to follow for writing meaningful content for your product, with examples.

It should be Clear, Concise and Useful

Do applaud if you think this article is a good performance, there, I just used a microcopy :)

Below is a summarised list of principles we mentioned in the article above.

Next steps

In the next article, we talk about how we did this exercise for Cuddle and how we ensured all the stakeholder follow the frameworks moving forward.

Content Strategy at Cuddle.ai: Part II-Frameworks and solutions

If you have been struggling with the writing content for your product, here’s one task for you — randomly pick up screens from your product and try to re-write the content by running them through the above-mentioned principles. We would love to see your outcome in responses below.

Thanks!