UX Principles for Content Writing (And Why They Matter)

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The quality of content is often treated as an afterthought compared to the volume of content you are producing and how many keywords you can stuff into each blog or article. Yet, word count and quantity of content do not guarantee its quality, and may actively put off a user looking for digestible information. 

UX writing, the copy used for technical guides, website design or 404 pages, prioritises readability and helps users find information quickly, principles that can benefit any piece of content. Whether it’s a user guide or an article on amblyopia, content and UX should account for readers’ emotional needs and present information in a clear, respectful and accessible way. 

In an age of AI-generated content produced at scale with the same information and tone, UX principles could be your secret weapon. By using the following laws and principles of UX writing, you have more useful information, a stronger brand voice and a more educated user who is now more ready to convert.

Key Takeaways

• UX Writing is the text used in guides, 404 pages and newsletter sign-ups. 
• It uses clear, short and easy-to-understand copy to help a user feel confident when using services or products. 
• Content and UX often deal with similar emotional reactions to complex or difficult topics. 
• By applying UX principles to content, you can make more compassionate and precise blogs, webpages or articles. 
• There are 4 main laws to UX writing that emphasise the importance of reducing complexity, information gain, familiarity and presentation. 
• Content can be judged by the core UX writing principles of clarity, necessity, conciseness, usefulness and brand voice. 
• UX and content should use compassion as a base guideline to be useful and empathetic. 

What is UX Writing?

Put simply, UX writing is the text you see in digital products, guides and websites. It is any text on the page that helps you understand what a service is or how to navigate a website. Think of 404 webpages or user manuals for smartphones. It includes short messages that tell you what to do after an error or explain how to sign up for a newsletter.

The exact term for a UX writer often changes depending on the company or the role, as some businesses may call it a copywriter, content writer or technical writer. 

UX vs Copy vs Content

To simplify the common misunderstanding, here’s what each copy style does:

• UX Writing: Helps users navigate an interface, device or website. It focuses on quick, clear messaging and transparent communication to guide users’ intentions. 
• Copywriting: Persuades readers and users to take immediate commercial actions, like buying a product or service. It focuses on brand awareness, sales language and conversions to create profit. 
• Content writing: Informs and educates users on specific topics to build authority. It focuses on value, information and storytelling to build trust and understanding while creating a unique voice for the brand.

Why UX Writing Matters

User experience is a crucial, yet often ignored part of reading anything online. If a user is struggling to read a text because it is too complicated, poorly laid out or full of jargon, they won’t keep reading it. The information may fail to engage readers, reducing the likelihood that they will continue reading, learn from the content or convert.

UX laws and principles can help you determine what information is necessary, where empathy is appropriate, how to apply your brand voice and how to present information clearly.

The 4 Laws of UX Writing

While there are many different laws that apply to user experience in general, the following 4 are the most relevant to UX writing. Understanding these laws can also influence copy and copywriting and help to understand the user’s emotions while they are experiencing your content. 

Dr Katharina Grimm, A UX writer with over 8 years of experience, highlights these 4 laws to keep in mind for quality UX writing: 

Hick’s Law

The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Users can easily be overwhelmed by information and choices, creating analysis paralysis and preventing immediate actions and conversions. In UX, options for users must be clear, short and easy to understand. 

How It Applies to Content

Useful information is a key point of writing content, but too much jargon and technical terms can alienate the reader and drive them to a competitor’s page. Do not overload content with keywords and terms and keep explanations exact and easy to navigate. An informed reader is more likely to feel confident purchasing a product or service, potentially increasing conversions.

Jakob’s Law

Users spend most of their time on other sites, so they prefer websites, tools and interfaces to work like the ones they know and like. Unnecessary novelty or unfamiliar systems increase the user’s cognitive load, making them feel less confident on your website and more likely to turn to a competitor. 

How It Applies to Content

Jakob’s Law highlights the importance of familiar patterns in website design. Use clear heading hierarchies (H1, H2 and H3) and layouts that align with users’ expectations. Respect and understand the audience’s reading patterns, and include calls to action where they are appropriate. Do not overuse buttons, or lay out paragraphs in a way that is hard or dull to read.  

Tesler’s Law

Every system, process or piece of content has a level of complexity that can’t be removed. Trying to downplay or ignore complexity can affect the user’s emotional experience and push this complexity onto the user. Good UX makes complexity easier to understand, or presents clear options to work through complexity. 

How It Applies to Content

Audiences often approach content when they want to understand a more complicated topic, or are confused about how something works. By using Tesler’s law, a writer can treat a complex topic as complex, instead of making the reader feel potentially inadequate. 

Acknowledging complexity, then simplifying it, presents exactly what a reader may be looking for, and generates more trust and authority. 

Postel’s Law

Be conservative in what you send, but liberal in what you accept. This law can be difficult to understand, but in essence it means keeping systems and information simple, even if what is accepted or communicated is complicated. Users could perform a wide variety of actions if they have poor guidance, and Postel’s law is about accepting the motivation and emotions behind these actions and finding the most concise way to address these feelings. 

How It Applies to Content

This law is crucial for keeping content understandable and easy to digest. Do not assume the level of knowledge your audience has unless your content is specifically designed for a precise market. Avoid using colourful or humorous language that may make a topic harder to understand. Consider the wide scope of why a user is consuming your content. Was it a search, or were they looking for specific information or services? What emotions are they feeling about the topic? 

The Laws Simplified

How to Consistently Add Quality UX to Content: The Six Principles of UX Writing 

Even with the 4 laws in mind, it can be difficult to ensure that content is addressing a user’s queries in a way that is clear, trustworthy and efficient. The following principles are used to judge if UX writing can be considered useful and high quality, and these criteria can be effectively applied to ensure good content: 

Necessity: Image over Text

Large sections of text are not always the most effective way to communicate a point or clearly illustrate a concept. A graph, table or illustration can sometimes communicate complex concepts more efficiently than text while also attracting the user’s attention.

Consider making image briefs for each piece of content to help you see more opportunities for visual information and to ensure more communicative, understandable content more consistently. 

Clarity over Cleverness

No matter what the topic is, UX writing and content must be unambiguous and easy to understand. You are first and foremost writing for a user, not pitching to a CEO or attracting new clients. The content should primarily serve the user’s needs.  Write with a global audience in mind: avoid cultural references and focus on accessibility and inclusiveness. Clarity is a key step to user confidence, which is crucial to a user converting. 

The Key to Content

Of all the UX rules to keep in mind for content, clarity is arguably the most important. A key purpose of content is information gain and building trust and authority in your brand. Writers often use humour or a light tone to build a rapport with the reader, but this is often not the most effective method. 

A joke or reference can go over the audience’s head, or feel like it’s making light of a heavy, complicated topic, and focusing more on brand voice than clarity may disrupt content effectiveness. You may also be alienating audiences of specific languages or cultures. 

Concise but Kind

Good UX must be efficient, and readers like efficient content. Points should be short and sweet, and text must be laid out to reduce cognitive overload, as audiences typically don’t want to read walls of text. While this criteria is good for content, there are a few differences in the writing styles that need to be adjusted. For content, conciseness may not strictly focus on short, laconic text. 

A topic may need to address complexity, and removing adverbs, descriptors and decorative words can make content dry and less readable. However, even when covering a complex topic, writers should streamline the information to make it as digestible and understandable as possible. 4 thousand words of jargon will deter users and undermine readability. However, a complex topic may require a longer explanation, and excessive concision can reduce information value.

Always Useful and Purposeful

UX writing and content must meet a purpose: to educate and guide the user’s journey. This includes content, as you are laying out information that should present some use to the reader in each section, and address the user’s feelings. To be useful in content, it is crucial to consider the emotional journey of whoever is on the website. A hard topic, like content describing a medical condition, needs to be exact with key information and assuage fears and panic. 

Content with a kind tone that supports the user’s feelings can be more useful in the moment than a more clinical tone. By contrast, if a user is looking for the exact melting point of iron, their needs are more straightforward: they simply want an accurate answer.

Branded Voice Where Possible

Straightforward copy can be useful, but it may not establish a distinctive brand voice or create lasting word associations and trust. All other UX rules and principles need to apply first, but when possible, use the unique tone and phrases of your brand whenever it is relevant. Think of famous brand phrases like ‘Just Do it’ or ‘There are some things money can’t buy’ and whether they are suitable to include. 

Here are a few more tips for how to include a branded voice in informative or user-focused content: 

• Metaphors: Phrases like ‘let’s break the ice’ or ‘we’ll help you keep a cool head’ in an article about freezers are quick, not distractingly humorous and easy to understand. 
• Play with slogans: Adjustments to slogans, like ‘the happiest place on earth’ put a clear brand voice in your content without disrupting flow or information. 
• Keep association positive: Even for jokes or to reinforce clarity, do not ever use wording that could create a negative association. Do not say ‘something is rotten’ in food market content, or make a joke about a car crash for a rental company. Ensure the viewer always has a good image in their head. 

Conversational, but Helpful

Even in short content, it is possible to find a conversational tone that is easy to read and makes a hard topic feel more manageable. For complex content, a conversational tone can also provide some relief to a negative mindset. 

A few helpful tips to keep in mind to make any writing more conversational include:

• Personal pronouns: treat yourself as a person and not an entity, i.e. ‘we help you’ instead of ‘support will help you.’ 
• Be gentle: Do not be sharp with tone in writing. Phrases like ‘obviously’ or ‘clearly’ can hurt what could already be a complicated emotional journey for the reader. 
• Use active voice: Avoid technical terms and use an active tone to encourage engagement, directness and confidence.  
• Take users seriously: You do not know the preferences or emotions of the person reading your content. They likely want the issues they looked up to be taken seriously, so terms like ‘oops’ or ‘whoopsie’ can easily be taken as condescending and immediately turn them off your brand. 

Finally, Empathy vs Compassion

Empathy in writing is often discussed as a crucial point in content, as it helps encourage the user’s perspective and can reveal what information is most important to them. However, labelling ‘empathy’ as the crucial factor in both content and UX writing may be a mistake. While empathy is powerful, it can cause a writer to only identify with readers similar to them, and write copy that only matches their personal experiences. 

To be empathetic is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but to be compassionate is to have a desire to help. By emphasising compassion over empathy, a writer can avoid assumptions and sensitivities while still creating helpful content. 

The key to compassionate content is not to guess the user’s emotions. Those can vary heavily from person to person. You must instead focus on the user’s reactions. Conduct user research and develop personas to help you understand your audience. In general, try not to create something that reflects your personal biases. 

Content Applications and Reader Experience: How it all Comes Together

High-quality, human-centred writing is crucial in an age of AI-generated content. Good UX writing creates user-friendly content that has a human edge and can address points and concerns audiences may not have even known they had. 

Transparency, clarity and accessible information are key factors for successful content. Through these laws and principles, a writer can more consistently create useful blogs, pages and articles that don’t just rank, but encourage more confident users and help them make informed purchasing decisions. 

At Prosperity Media, our team has spent years developing the tools and skills to craft and implement a bespoke content plan that emphasises compassion and brand voice. An educated reader is a reader more likely to convert, so we don’t just focus on traffic, but create truly helpful blogs, webpages and articles designed to build trust and authority. 

Book a free consultation today to develop a content strategy built to make your business a truly trusted voice in your field.