It’s just a copy change
You may have heard these words before. You’re working on a project and everyone’s focussed on delivering, fast. What should this new page or feature be called? Is the nomenclature correct within the industry or clashing with anything else within our larger ecosystem? Don’t worry we can change copy later on…
Getting copy correct is fundamental to UX. If people don’t understand what the hell you’re trying to say, it doesn’t matter what size button or font you’ve picked, or colour you’ve selected. They will drop off your page or become frustrated trying to carry out a task.
For some reason, people think that changing copy is the easiest thing to do. And, sure, it probably should be, in comparison to everything else going on. Unfortunately, it isn’t always that easy. Here are a couple of problems I’ve encountered:
No content management system (CMS)
When you’re small and scrappy, you might not have a CMS. Instead, you’re embedding strings into your product. You might be working across Android, iOS and Web, each with subtle differences. You’re also localising the content into multiple languages. These strings soon start to get tangled, quickly. Changing copy at this stage is time consuming and messy.
Growing pains
Fast forward, you’re now large and not-so-scrappy but now you have support pages and developer docs, on top of your website and product content. Naming conventions have made their way into your APIs. Internally, people start to pick it up. Sales folks are mentioning it to potential customers. And, so on… Changing copy at this stage becomes political and confusing.
What can I do?
There are a couple of things you can do to avoid these situations.
- See what other people are saying first of all. In most cases the problem has already been solved. No need to reinvent the wheel. Follow Jakobs law - “Users spend most of their time on other sites.” The expectation is for the same UX so give users what they want and don’t try to be different, just for the sake of it.
- Listen to what users are calling things. Again, users will already have a mental model on how something should work and they’ll have a way of expressing this. Listen carefully and take note.
- Think about it early on. Don’t leave it to the last minute. Test it out early to ensure it makes sense to your users.
- Push back if someone says “it’s just a copy change”.