Converting visitors into clients with the power of UX copywriting
In this episode of "Process to Profitability," I sit down with Susan Reoch, a UX copywriter, to discuss the importance of writing a website based on user experience. We delve into the principles of UX copywriting and how they can enhance a website's effectiveness in converting clients. We explore topics such as creating a clear and concise message, utilizing effective micro copy, and understanding user flow. Join us as we break down the steps to improve website UX and discover the power of collaboration between designers and writers. If you're looking to enhance your digital strategy and optimize your website's user experience, this episode is a must-listen.
Timestamps:
[00:02:08] Meet Susan Reoch
[00:06:05] What is user experience?
[[00:09:20] How copywriting ties in with UX
[00:10:23] Design and copy both support the overall strategy of your website
[00:11:20] Why UX is so important for the entire customer journey
[00:13:07] You're more familiar with UX than you think you are
[00:14:21] The biggest UX mistakes business owners are making
[00:16:43] How to start improving your website's UX
[00:18:25] The easiest way to improve the UX of your website quickly
[00:20:09] Design your website strategically to align with UX principles that make visitor decisions easier
[00:21:45] How should we approach testing UX decisions?
[00:25:54] Connect with Susan
Key Topics:
Simplified user experience (UX) copywriting approach
Importance of clear and concise messaging
Strategic approach to website design and content
Collaboration between designers and writers in UX
Applying UX principles for effective copywriting
Using UX processes in copywriting and testing
Testing UX through observations and software tools
Clarity and user flow in website design and copywriting.
Resources:
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: Have you been hearing a lot about UX and user experience, but you're not quite sure how that translates to your website and what you're trying to do in your world? Well, today's episode is perfect for you.
[00:00:15] I'm talking with UX copywriter Susan Reoch all about how you can write and plan and strategize your website based on user experience and not just conversion copywriting or launch copywriting the way we typically think about it.
[00:00:33] As you listen to this episode, she gives a lot of tips and resources, and it might sound overwhelming at first, but I want you to hang in there because many of these things that we talk about and the principles of UX are things you've already seen on websites and you might be already doing on your website because they are part of this bigger design trend. And so it's not as overwhelming as you think to then dive in and evaluate your website and take a look at what this could mean for you and how you could improve your website to create a better user experience for your visitors.
[00:01:17] Susan Reoch is a maverick in the copywriting world, having shaken up the industry with her trailblazing techniques. She's known for her killer web copy skills and digital strategy informed by her decade long user experience career. This unique blend has seen her featured in top tier publications like Copy Hackers, Writers In Tech, the Freelancers Year, and The Content Bite. Her free weekly newsletter, the UX Factor and her UX group coaching program for copywriters Beyond Web Copy are go-to resources for online business owners and copywriters looking for the right words and strategy to skyrocket their success.
[00:01:51] Hi, Susan. Thanks for joining me today.
[00:01:55] Susan Reoch: Oh, pleasure. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:01:57] Samantha Mabe: I read your official bio at the beginning of the show, but can you tell us a little bit more about who you are, where you're located, and then what your business journey has looked like?
Meet Susan Reoch
[00:02:08] Susan Reoch: Yeah, for sure. I love that question. So I'm Susan Reoch. I'm located in a tiny little, um, old fishing village called Kiama that's just south of Sydney. It's absolutely beautiful. So I love being by the sea.
[00:02:21] I'm a long way from where I began, I guess. I guess really what people are usually interested in is the UX part, which we're gonna talk more about, which stands for user experience. And I got started in that, I think it was almost like 12 years ago now. And I was living in Amsterdam at the time, so very different place.
[00:02:40] I was working at Booking.Com, which was such a privilege to get to see a company that fully embraced UX early on and, you know, learn all about it there. And I was working as, what we just called at the time, I think we were called e-commerce copywriters or something like that. I didn't even, I didn't even really know that what I was doing was at the time cuz it sort of preceded the terminology that has, you know, grown up around it.
[00:03:07] And when I came back to Australia, that was a problem because I was pitching myself as a copywriter and I wasn't. I was doing what we now call UX writing. So writing little bits of microcopy to optimize an overarching user journey, um, which is very different from traditional conversion copywriting. However, I did manage to get a job eventually. It was very stressful time and I was like, oh, ok, this is copywriting in Australia, I guess.
[00:03:34] So I worked in an SEO agency and I was doing more of that traditional, um, you know, what we think of as traditional sort of copywriting, conversion copywriting, SEO copywriting, um, there. But what I found when I started my business, um, which was about 3-4 years ago now I started my own business, was that I didn't know quite how to position myself in the market. Um, I was like, well, I've got all this UX knowledge and I've got all this copywriting knowledge. Which should I go after? Cause we're told niche, niche, niche, right? And I was like, but I love them both.
[00:04:08] And what I found is when I was doing copywriting, all my UX knowledge fed into that. And when I was doing UX writing, All my copywriting knowledge fed into that as well. So I was like, you know what? I'm not buying that. These are two separate things. I see marketing websites, which is now what I specialize in, as digital products. Just like an app, just like a functional website, like Google or Facebook, you know, where you're trying to do a job.
[00:04:35] Well, on a marketing website, you're also trying to do a job. You're trying to find out do I wanna buy from this person? Do I wanna sign up for their thing? How do I do that? And, you know, great UX is part of that.
[00:04:45] So that's sort of what I've come to specialize in, um, and help people out with both as clients, but I also, um, train copywriters inside a group coaching program called Beyond Web Copy.
[00:04:57] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. Yeah, I heard you on another podcast and I was like, I know what UX is from a website design perspective and I have just recently started having other people kind of understand what that is in the online space.
[00:05:13] I really want to know how UX and copywriting and like all of these things fit together. Because when we can bring all of those pieces together, we create just a really powerful experience for our users. And it helps our business so much too.
[00:05:29] Susan Reoch: You nailed it. You nailed it.
[00:05:31] It really, I always just, if I'm saying it in really simple terms, I'm like, my goal is to create a win-win for the business and for their website visitors. You know, they really go hand in hand. And I really, that resonates with a lot of people because they've been told, you know, you've gotta sell, sell, sell. And this is like, no. If you just really hone in on what you know your people want and are trying to do, you can have those big business wins.
[00:05:56] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. So what is UX copywriting? And maybe how is that different from like some of the other stuff people might be more familiar with?
What is user experience?
[00:06:05] Susan Reoch: For sure. So I think just to. Take it one step back just so that everyone listening is like, oh, okay. Cause when you're familiar with UX, it's easy to throw that term around a lot. But user experience, what people often think is it's the experience of someone on a site, which is absolutely true. You know it, it's exactly what the words say.
[00:06:26] But there's also two other definitions for it. So it's also a process of design, UX design, which I'm sure you're familiar with Samantha. Which is all around design thinking, where you empathize, you define, um, you know, the problem someone's having. You then ideate a solution, you prototype, create it, and then you test it, and then you sort of go around again.
[00:06:46] So it's a very iterative way of doing it as opposed to, um, you know, I think often in copywriting, people think of it more for launch copy, and they think, well, I've got my last launch, my last website, put that in the bin. I'm gonna try something completely new. I'm gonna innovate and I'm gonna try and beat whatever my results were with that.
[00:07:06] Whereas with UX, yeah, it's more that iterative like, okay, what parts aren't working? Which parts can I tighten up? How can I make this better? So you don't just like publish a website and be done. You're constantly looking to improve it and get better results. How we're able to sort of like think of new things to try.
[00:07:27] You know, UX is also, you know, quite a few decades in now and there has sort of been these design principles, that are considered good UX. Um, that are sort of heuristic, something called heuristics, so people can go check out those on the Nielsen Norman Group website. That's a great resource for anyone that's listening. And also psychological UX laws. So I'll give a couple of examples of what they might be.
[00:07:52] So, a UX heuristic, which we use a lot in copywriting, is matching the system, um, with the real world. So on your website, for example, you're using words that your visitors use. You're not using jargon and it's, it seems so obvious, a lot of this stuff does sound really obvious, but it's so easy to slip into jargon when you're writing cause it's really, it's really concise.
[00:08:17] When I look at a lot of copywriters websites, for example, you know, we are guilty of it too. We also like to say, we like to connect and convert people, you know? Yeah. And you, you hear it so much that you're like, yeah, of course. I know what that means.
[00:08:29] Whereas, you know, someone who wants a website to sell their funky socks. It's like convert, no, I just wanna sell socks. They don't know what it means. So it's like just making sure, like going through and thinking, oh, okay, maybe I can do a little bit more of this, you know, matching between system and real world.
[00:08:47] And a psychological law, for example is a Hicks law, which I don't know if you've heard of that, but the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. So you might look at your website and go, oh, I'm asking them to make two. I've got three CTAs all in a row. Like they're gonna like have to take time to think about that. And when people take time on the internet, they tend to just abandon.
[00:09:09] Laws makes it sound a little bit more set in stone, but when you match that with that, that process of iteration and trying out things, it just gives you a good starting point, um, to look for.
How copywriting ties in with UX
[00:09:20] Susan Reoch: So yeah, and basically we do all that with words cuz as you know, Samantha working as a designer. There's always this debate what comes first, the copy or the design? And I like to always think that copy comes first, but in order to do that effectively, you have to understand this UX design part. You really do.
[00:09:42] Because you might write something beautiful but not understand how that's actually gonna work on a website, you know? And it won't work. And the designer will get it and go I don't know what to do with it.
[00:09:56] Samantha Mabe: That makes a lot of sense. And I agree copy needs to come first, but there are certainly rules and guidelines people need to follow when writing copy.
[00:10:05] If we want to list out like three different service options next to each other, the paragraphs need to be the same length. We can't have one be three lines and one be 10, or it's not gonna look right.
[00:10:18] Susan Reoch: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's in having an understanding of that design.
Design and copy both support the overall strategy of your website
[00:10:23] Samantha Mabe: So I love this approach to copywriting because this is also how we approach design and I like to remind myself of like, My mom, who is tech friendly enough that she can go to the website. She knows how to do stuff, but she is not gonna go dig through somebody's site to figure something out. She wants it to be simple and easy and she is not gonna go through three CTAs. She's gonna have no idea what convert means. When she goes to her chiropractor website, she just wants to know, okay, you treat the condition I have, you take my insurance. Here's how I can schedule an appointment, and that is part of the design, it's part of the copywriting, and it really comes back to like, there's this strategy. There's a reason why we're doing all of this, and every piece of it needs to work in that strategy.
[00:11:17] Susan Reoch: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent.
Why UX is so important for the entire customer journey
[00:11:20] Samantha Mabe: We covered a lot of it, but is there anything else that we missed about why user experience and UX is so important?
[00:11:28] Susan Reoch: Yeah, I think, um, we have, we have covered a lot. I think it's really what you just said, looking at that overarching strategy. And it really allows you to see things that you might have missed. For example, looking at even the bigger strategy outside your website and looking at like, where are people coming from?
[00:11:50] I think sometimes people think they're gonna get a website and then that's gonna be it. All the customers are gonna come flooding in. I'm like, no, you need a strategy for traffic.
[00:11:57] And then you also need a strategy once they leave your website. What's your customer experience like? What's your email system like? It's looking at that whole, um, digital organism and, you know, making sure that everything plays a role.
[00:12:10] It's obviously important for the people at the end of your experience, like your mom. And it's obviously, you know, I think we've covered why it's important for your business.
Why UX is important for copywriters and people writing their own copy
[00:12:18] Susan Reoch: But why it's important for the people who own the website or are writing for the website is it takes a lot of pressure off., actually. You know, rather than trying to create this all singing, all dancing, like what I see people do is, you know, like I've gotta get my whole business and every thought I've ever had, it needs to go on my website so that people can fully like, dive into my world. And it's like, Well, no, that's actually not what they want.
[00:12:40] And if you just look at, you know, how you'd create this strategy and then you execute it, it actually tells you what needs to go on each page rather than, you know, like just being completely overwhelmed.
[00:12:52] I find it just gives you, like, I actually don't know how people write websites without understanding this stuff because it just really helps you nail down what's on every page and what they need to hear about how you can keep moving them through that journey.
You're more familiar with UX than you think you are
[00:13:07] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. I think a lot of people are more familiar than with UX than they think they are.
[00:13:11] Susan Reoch: Yes.
[00:13:11] Samantha Mabe: It's just not something they would call that. But they see how it works and they kind of understand the, those rules and principles because they've seen it in action so many times.
[00:13:23] Susan Reoch: Yeah, totally. Totally.
[00:13:24] And a lot of people, like when a lot of copywriters join Beyond Web Copy, they often say like, you know, the motivation for joining is they're doing a lot of this sort of intuitively. And they wanna understand the actual step by step and what's involved and it just gives them so much more confidence and power.
[00:13:41] I think a lot of people do understand. We use websites all the time, right? We know when it's super frustrating. I had an experience the other day where I was trying to put in my birthdate. And the design was broken, so instead of just the, you know, dd/mm/yyyyy, it had like day squished into this tiny little box and then I was typing over that and it was staying there and it worked. But I was like, oh, this is terrible. This is terrible UX. So I think often people recognize bad UX more than they recognize good UX. Cuz if you're having a great user experience, you just like, sort of seamlessly walking through things. You almost don't even notice, um, what you're doing.
The biggest UX mistakes business owners are making
[00:14:21] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. So for people who have a website, and maybe they're not a copywriter, they're not a designer, what are some of the biggest mistakes in UX that people are making?
[00:14:33] Susan Reoch: Yeah, I think part of the reason why I like to bring up that use the real world, match the real world, um, with the language that they use is because I think a lot of people try to sound clever in their copy and they sacrifice clarity. You can often go to a website and not understand when you first look at it what it is that they're even offering.
[00:14:55] They've gone so deep and they're like, oh, well, it'll be obvious that I'm a florist so I'm gonna talk about, I don't know my, what makes me different. I'm like, no, you need to state straight up, you know what it is you do, who you do it for, so that people stay there and immediately like, oh yeah, you know, this is what I need. I'm gonna start interacting with that.
[00:15:15] So I think just looking at like, when people first land on your homepage, is it clear what you do and who you do it for? I think that that is a big one.
[00:15:25] The other one, which I sort of mentioned, is trying to jam sort of every single aspect of their business onto a website, thinking that it has to be, you know, a reflection almost of their organization. These are all my services, so you know, we need to, and this is how we structure them and group them. So this is how we've gotta do it on the website. Rather than thinking, you know, how is someone actually gonna move through the website? You know? Cause they're probably not gonna open up every single one of those pages and them all up next each other. I think that that can often be, um, a problem.
[00:15:56] And the other thing that I see, and this is more where I think the UX and the copywriting part is so important, is people think of webpages almost like they do as newspaper ads. You know, cuz that's where copywriting comes from. It comes from things like billboards, ads, you know, the Mad men days, that kind of thing.
[00:16:15] And so they're like, if I just make this page super compelling, then that's it, job done. But they're not thinking, oh, where have these people come from? Where are they going next?
[00:16:24] I see amazing sales pages sometimes, and I click through the cart page and I'm like, but you just gave up on the cart page. You're so close. Keep going. Keep people moving. You know?
[00:16:35] So I think that they're some of the big mistakes that I see people making and they're, they're small and easy things that can be fixed as well.
How to start improving your website's UX
[00:16:43] Samantha Mabe: All right, so if somebody wants to get started on improving their website UX, like what are the basic steps that they could start out with?
[00:16:51] Susan Reoch: Yeah, for sure. There's a couple of ways to approach this.
[00:16:54] So the more in depth steps that I teach inside Beyond Web Copy is about finding the point of connection between what your visitors are trying to achieve and what you are trying to achieve as a business, and making sure that those connect.
[00:17:08] Then you need to look at what is the structure or architecture, information architecture is what we call it, that makes sense in terms of like a navigation?
[00:17:18] And looking at each page, so you've got the skeleton there, you know, you've got the sort of your goal there. Then you wanna look at each page and is there a logical hierarchy? Is the most important information at the top? Does it move people down so that they can get more information? Is there a CTA at the bottom? There's another thing that I often see missing.
[00:17:38] Then when you've got those pages, you wanna connect it all with microcopy, which is something we deal a lot with in UX. So they're like, you know, the little bits of copy that guide people through the journey. So we're talking about button copy, um, copy on your forms, confirmation messages, error messages, those kind of things. And making sure that they're keeping people on track.
[00:18:01] Penultimately, um, focusing on those points of conversion, so around the buttons and making sure they're optimized, making sure they're super compelling and like clear. Getting people to click through.
[00:18:10] And then making sure that overall we just wanna be constantly sweeping to make sure that we are being inclusive, that we're using accessible language.
[00:18:18] And also just testing, you know, and making sure that what we're writing is actually effective. That's a big picture.
The easiest way to improve the UX of your website quickly
[00:18:25] Susan Reoch: But I think just breaking it down, if you're just getting started, and I've got another, um, resource called the Microcopy Micro Course, and that's just three steps. Just walk through your website if you have one. What is the main thing that you want people to be doing? Walk through it and just look at those little bits of microcopy along the way. And just see like, would you keep clicking? Or where would you get confused and where are the areas that you could improve there?
UX ties copy and design together
[00:18:50] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and a lot of those are the same things that I talk about when people ask for good design. In your headline, you've got to state what it is you do. You've gotta put a call to action down at the bottom of your page if somebody makes it that far.
[00:19:02] It's all like one piece of a whole. And it's hard to talk about design without copy and copy without design. And I think that's where UX copy comes in because you are thinking about the design, because you're thinking about the user experience from the very beginning.
[00:19:18] Susan Reoch: Hundred percent.
[00:19:18] I always say, so when I worked in UX, you know, I was working with designers, developers, a writer, and a product owner who sort of manages the whole thing, which is how most UX teams exist today in the world because you can't have one piece without the other. They all have to work together. You're all working towards the same goal.
[00:19:39] So working with a UX copywriter on your website means that when it goes to design, you know, even if you do have them separate and you are using two separate contractors, it's gonna work really, really well.
[00:19:51] And designers love getting copy from someone who understands UX and writers love working with designers who understand UX too. Because there are still, unfortunately some, you know, designers out there that don't, and see it still as like just a visual thing. No, it's that strategy that's underneath it that's so important.
Design your website strategically to align with UX principles that make visitor decisions easier
[00:20:09] Samantha Mabe: One of the mistakes I see, and you mentioned it, is like you need to think about your navigation instead of having a dropdown with a million different services that a lot of my clients have, because they're in like the wellness industry. Every condition they could possibly target has a separate page where it's like, We can condense this.
[00:20:28] And then when your goal for somebody like them is to get somebody onto a consultation, you're gonna help them choose the best option, because they're not gonna know anyway. They can read as much as they want on your website, but they're still not going to know the right service that they might need.
[00:20:44] Susan Reoch: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that ties back into that Hicks law that I was talking about. You know, that if they see all those choices, it's just completely overwhelming for them. So you have to do the hard work, unfortunately, for your website visitors and make those decisions.
Using UX processes to make decisions about your website design
[00:21:01] Susan Reoch: And there's certain UX processes that you can use to do that. So something like card sorting for example, for someone who's in that situation where they're like, 'oh, well how do these group together.' You literally can have like a card for each of the things and just give it to a bunch of people and say, group them. Just group them together as you would in a way that makes sense to you. And that way you're getting to understand someone's mental models or the way they think about things. And then you can use that on your website.
[00:21:30] There's so much there, there's so many great processes, um, and laws, like I said, that, that are available. And it's just about figuring out, okay, what do I need to figure out? And is there something already available to me that's gonna help me figure that out? And often there is.
How should we approach testing UX decisions?
[00:21:45] Samantha Mabe: When you're looking at testing UX, if you've made some of these improvements, how do you go about doing that? How long do you recommend people let those changes sit before they go in and make more adjustments?
[00:21:58] Susan Reoch: I mean, it's gonna, it's gonna be a frustrating answer for people, but it's gonna depend on how much traffic you have. If you have a lot of traffic, you can probably make the decisions, you know, more quickly than if you have less traffic. It isn't a perfect science or it is much harder when you've got a smaller sort of business and smaller amount of people coming to your website for sure.
Different ways of testing your design
[00:22:21] Susan Reoch: A lot of, lot of UX centers around AB testing. So you run two variants against each other and you see which one wins and you put the one that wins live and then you, you know, try and find something else to test and you move forward like that.
[00:22:35] But what you can actually do is use, um, I think of it more as softer testing in a way and actually sit beside someone and say, I would like you to, and don't use words that are already in the navigation. Like, I would like you to go to my services page. Don't say that, but be like, you know, I would like you to book a consult and just sit with them and see where they stumble or where they click is really powerful as well.
[00:23:03] So there is the the AB testing, but I honestly think for a lot of people that are running their own websites, you know, you may not have the kind of traffic to get a really reliable result from that. So looking at these other ways, like user testing. There's some software called Hotjar where you can see where people are clicking and scrolling. And how they're moving around your site. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a good, it's better than not doing anything. And it's a good way to understand how people are using your site.
[00:23:34] Another really simple one, which I use all the time, especially when I'm writing sales pages, is before it goes live, is to give them to someone and give it into them in a Google Doc or you can print it out and say, highlight in green all the bits that are clear. Highlight in red all the bits that are confusing or off-putting.'
[00:23:52] There are ways to test that aren't those, you know, more analytics driven ways because not everyone is gonna have the resources and the capabilities to do that. So hopefully that gives some people some ideas for different ways of testing as well.
Small changes can make a big difference in user experience
[00:24:07] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. I have used Hotjar and other heat mapping tools and we did it on one of my clients' websites to look at something and we realized people were clicking on something multiple times that was not actually a button.
[00:24:20] And we were like, okay, well we need to either make it clear that that's not a button or we need to turn it into a button. If people think it's a button and they click on it, it doesn't work. We all get frustrated and, and don't wanna stay on that site. And that's an easy change once you realize what's going on.
[00:24:37] Susan Reoch: Yeah. And the other one that I see quite a lot, and you can, people can do this on their own websites, is there anywhere on the page that you're clicking on that takes you to that same page? You know, if you click on a, like you click on a link and you're like, Nothing happened. Just going through and checking for those little things.
[00:24:54] I did just think of another thing cause we were talking about navigation and how to figure out how to group things. A great little test that you can run there is something called tree jacking. People can actually do it in Excel spreadsheet. You take a stripped down version of your navigation, so you might have just, say if you were a health provider, and you had your home, and then you had your services. And just say you had three categories, but underneath those there was more categories. And you just say to someone, ' find out more about Therapeutic massage or whatever it is.' and people are like, 'oh, okay.' And they just highlight the cell where they would look.
[00:25:32] And that's a great way of just testing that people are going to the right place. It's very lofi and it's not perfect. But again, it's better than not running any, and just hoping that people will figure it out.
[00:25:44] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. And we'll link to these resources in the show notes for people who, so they can figure out like what to look at and where to go.
Connect with Susan
[00:25:54] Samantha Mabe: But where can people connect with you online and get the resources that you mentioned if they want to learn more and start implementing this for their websites?
[00:26:04] Susan Reoch: Yeah, for sure. So there are two places that you can come and grab everything. Um, first of all, Instagram, I love Instagram. I'm Susan Reoch underscore copywriter there. Come connect, say hi in the dms. I love sending voice notes. And if you follow the link, all the resources are there, the link in my bio.
[00:26:22] The other place you can go, of course, is to my website, that's susanreochcopywriter.com. It's very easy to join my, um, email list, which is called the UX Factor. So every week I send out a story and hints and tips and all kinds of things as well.
[00:26:36] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about this. I'm excited for people to listen and think about copywriting and design a little bit differently.
[00:26:44] Susan Reoch: Yeah, amazing. Me too. Thanks for having me.
