5 easy ways to improve product content fast
Content design came to Business Grants Portal fairly late in the game. When I joined the team, the beta was out with one grant. Several others were in production, with usability testing going on the week I started.
Most people said, ‘the experience is great, doesn’t look like a government site at all but the language could be clearer’. I obviously had my work cut out for me.
So when your product is pretty far down the development road and launch is just around the corner, what are some easy ways to quickly make content more understandable?
1. Simplify
The first thing I do with any project is to focus on the language. Eliminate unnecessary words, replace long words with short ones and break up long sentences.
Don’t forget to look at punctuation too. If you need anything other than commas, full stops and the odd colon, maybe you can simplify that sentence.
2. Get active
Ensure that wherever possible, you’re using the active voice. It makes content more concise and direct.
We always talk about content being a conversation. Using the active voice makes it easier to achieve a friendly, conversational tone. Your content will sound like a real person is talking, instead of corporatese.
3. Be consistent
With no one keeping tabs on the style, content becomes riddled with inconsistencies. Things like which words are capitalised, what headings look like, when to use sentence case or initial caps.
These might seem small but can be jarring to the people who use your product. So seek them out and start putting some rules in place.
4. Focus on flow
If you’ve been making all these tweaks one screen at a time, take a step back and look at the big picture.
Does your end of the conversation hold up as people go through their journeys? Are you leading people to where they need to go? Are you giving them useful information at the right time? Does the screen you’re looking at make sense given where people are coming from and where they’re going next?
5. Watch your tone
You’d welcome someone cheerfully but it probably isn’t best to deliver an error message equally cheerfully.
Find the potential pain points or disappointments and do what you can to smooth them over. There’s a pretty big difference between being told ‘your application was unsuccessful’ and ‘you’ve been rejected’.
I like to pay particular attention to error messages. If someone has triggered one, they’re in a situation that could easily become a pain point. So how you talk to them and help them resolve the issue is important. You don’t want to make them feel like it’s their fault — even if it is. You want to helpfully guide them back onto the right path. The right tone can often make or break the experience.
So 5 quick ways to take your content from distracting to half-decent. Delightful is a whole other level that I’ll save for another blog post. Whether you’re a writer or not, give these tips a go and leave a comment if they help you make your content better.
