Done badly, service design not only confuses users, but costs companies and organisations money – as summed up by Louise Downe in her Government Digital Service blog post:

If these services aren’t immediately understandable and easy to use it can confuse users and lead to mistakes being made. This increases casework and phone calls for government – and the amount of time spent by users trying to fix their problem. All of this costs money. 

Having collaborated closely with some very talented user researchers and interaction designers, I’ve been immersed in user-centred design (UCD) for the last few months. Here are my top three takeaways from this approach and how it can transform a service’s usability.

Integrate words your service users actually use

Without user research, it’s easy to assume that as long as a word is in plain English it’s right. But what if there are other plain English words that would work better? Or a slightly more complex word that will mean more to your users?

User research and testing will reveal the terminology your users actually use.

Observe a lab session and note the terms users use to describe their interaction with an early version of your service. Or as part of a user needs discovery session, see what users would like to get out of your service and record how they describe this.

For a job search service I was recently working on, user research revealed that ‘feedback’ was a key term mentioned by users. I therefore recommended that interview feedback be integrated into the service and that this exact term be used.

Keyword research will also identify the best terminology to use. Find out what people are searching for in relation to your service, then use those words in the service itself.

Test early

A good copywriter is a diligent perfectionist by their very nature. However, this can mean their instinct is to work and work on content before they’re satisfied it’s spot on and ready to be shared.

Sharing early, with both peers and users, guides the content and stops wasting resources on what ultimately won’t work.

Share your initial ideas with user research and design colleagues to benefit from their specialist knowledge. Pair with a dev to further flesh out concepts and identify any technical limitations.

Get content in front of a user early to see how they interpret your service. Are questions clear? Do they understand what they need to do? Does the journey need to change?

Even if you don’t feel the content is there yet, testing some initial assumptions is invaluable. It not only identifies weak and successful areas, but will help you build up user-centred evidence for that all important stakeholder buy in.

Consider the whole service, not just digital

When designing a digital service you need to think about the entrance and exit points and how it fits into a wider offline experience.

For example, if there’s telephone or in-store contact are the customer service operatives using certain terminology? Is the best service strategy to align with this or to change those terms to match the digital service?

Or, is there accompanying paper documentation that needs to fit the language of your digital service? Are users able to book an appointment or experience online and therefore offline expectations need to be set?

Evaluate the end-to-end user experience to see where your digital service fits in and how you can make it a seamless part of the whole. Remember, your users won’t make a distinction between a great online service and bad offline experience (or vice versa). They’ll simply come away with a negative experience full stop.

“Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of a product to light faster, in a collaborative, cross-functional way. It reduces the emphasis on thorough documentation while increasing the focus on building a shared understanding of the actual product experience being designed.” – Gothelf and Seiden

From discovery stage research to product design, collaboration is face to face and rapid. The entire team sketches, evaluates and tests ideas together, building and learning quickly. From my own experience of working within a Lean UX methodology, workshops, dev pairing and cross-disciplinary discussion not only moves the project much faster, but creates a better, user-focused product.

In particular, reading Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden has enhanced my understanding of the interplay of agile and lean. Even having participated in agile design and development sprints for a number of years, I still gained a lot from such a comprehensive framework.

As well as the chapter on integrating Lean UX and Agile, there are great sections on how to approach user research as a cross-disciplinary team, collaborative design and championing lean UX across an organisation.

“By putting designers, developers, subject matter experts product managers, business analysts, and other competencies together in the same space, and focusing them all on the same challenge, you create an outcome far greater than working in silos allows.”  – Gothelf and Seiden

Lean UX is well worth putting aside a few hours to read.

That’s not your average user. That’s a perfect user.

Too often in content design average just means someone who does exactly what you, the business, want them to do. By thinking that everyone who isn’t edge case can be lumped into an optimistically large bucket is to risk missing some key user needs.

Test, don’t assume

You may think your average user will have no problems engaging with your site. But who is that user? Generation Y or someone older? Higher educated or school leaver? Always online or more of a newb?

Test your functionality across your whole demographic. Regularly.

First click testing, interviews or full usability testing – whatever your research method, test your designs with a wide range of users. What works for some may not for others, while identifying common problems will show what urgently needs revisiting.

Remember, in house discussions can’t be separated from your in depth product knowledge. While you may be trying to think objectively, looking from the inside won’t robustly test your product. No external testing risks mistaking your own team, however subconsciously, as your average user.

Accessibility for all

Your profiling may reveal your average user to be 30 and educated, but does that mean your content should be written for a 30 year old with a degree? Sounds far too lofty to be a good web experience.

Writing for a reading age of 9 doesn’t mean childish content. It simply challenges your writers to write in concise, plain English. Short sentences that can be scanned and understood at a glance should always be the goal. The Campaign for Plain English have some great guides, including this A-Z of alternative terms. Why say complete when you can say finish?

Take a similar approach to visual design. While your average user may be likely to have good eyesight, does that mean you should use tiny font? Or busy, intricate visuals. Clean, bold design is widely appealing while meeting accessibility guidelines.

Get perspective

Yes, your average user may view a few items, select one and checkout, but what’s their perspective? How do their emotions affect their actions? Surely there’s no such thing as an average emotion.

Emotions are as important as actions when it comes to user-centred design. Are they excited or nervous? In a rush or awaiting inspiration? Curious or frustrated? Thinking about where your user will encounter your site (context), what they’re trying to do (task) and why (motivation) will help you gauge their emotion. Then test your assumptions.

You may have a good idea of your average user. But do you want your site to work for the narrow centre of your venn diagram? Or the vast majority of your wonderfully diverse customers?

Channels

“If your service will be used via more than one channel, you need to consider how these channels will overlap and interact with one another.”

Lexicon

“The vocabulary and structure of your websites and your apps is a major component of the evolving conversation between your business and your customers and employees.”

Users

“Do you know who’s using your system? Do you know how they’re using it? And perhaps most importantly, do you know what information they want from your systems?”

“Your goal is to do your best to learn about your users’ major information needs and likely information-seeking behaviours.”

Search

“Searching, browsing, and asking are all methods of finding, and these are the basic building blocks of information-seeking behaviour.”

Analytics

“Search analytics provide a sense of what users commonly seek, and can help inform your understanding of their information needs and seeking behaviours.”

All quotes are from chapters 2 and 3 of Information Architecture 4th Edition 2015 by L. Rosenfeld, P. Morville and J. Arango.

So what’s Frakencopy? It’s when too many (often subjective) opinions inform copy. The content is often so compromised it stops reflecting the copywriter’s expertise or the user’s needs.

So here’s how to use data to make better copywriting decisions, stopping any Frankencopy from creeping in.

Guess then test

Close collaboration with a data analyst or insight team should be part of the copy process. Insight into user behaviour can narrow things down at the concepting stage and robustly show what’s working once live.

On a recent placement I worked closely with a data analyst, adopting a continuous test and learn strategy. Often initial content ideas were proven, but sometimes – and equally as valuable – an assumption was disproved. For example, the consensus in marketing media that people respond best to positive messaging was untrue for our audience. In direct split tests hard-hitting messaging had the most impact.

By proposing a content strategy and then using data to validate performance, you can adopt an agile approach, quickly abandoning less successful elements – leaving the resource to focus on what works.

Be specific

Well implemented analytics can be so specific, there’s no excuse for working from broad assumptions.

With data influencing your copywriting decisions, you can zoom in on the exact instance where a particular content approach works best. You can see if particular messaging only works at a certain time of year. Or whether one audience group responds to certain messaging above another. Or if you see a different response during the week compared to weekends, for example.

Create informed stakeholders

Stakeholders are experts in their field, providing feedback based on years of experience. Their passion for their field and the brand can make it challenging to keep feedback within a specific, objective remit.

By sharing data and insight with stakeholders, they can better understand why you’ve made certain copy decisions. So when presenting copy, include the latest audience insight to speed up the sign off process.

Often, when you can demonstrate to a stakeholder that your content decisions are based on users’ recent behaviour they’re convinced. By making them better informed they can feel more secure in your decisions reducing the need for extensive sign off.

A track record of data that shows the effectiveness of your content and strategy will help build trust and your position as a content expert.

The brief should act as a springboard for the creative. Providing short details will be far more helpful than product owners drafting copy or designs. A good brief enables the creative to deliver within specific requirements without narrowing possibilities too early or restricting creative thinking.

When tempted to write a brief full of suggestions, remember you’ve engaged a copywriter or designer, not a human spell checker or colourer-in. They have a skillset to offer that a short, solid brief will help unleash.

Purpose

All content should have a definite purpose. Why are you commissioning it now? Why is it of interest to the user? What do you want them to do? What business goals does it meet?

If you’re finding it hard to clearly define the purpose of the content, you should revisit your content plan. It’s better to create fewer pieces of great content, then have a calendar full of feeble content.

Audience

Do you have personas? Target groups? Specific people you want to reach based on their previous brand engagement?

The brief should include a short description of the intended audience. It should signpost to any further information on that audience’s behaviour and needs.

KPIs

What does the success of this content look like? Defining KPIs will help further refine the purpose too. What do you want this content to do and how will you measure whether it’s worked?

Must haves

Are there some high ranking keywords you want to use? Do you have certain brand terms that need to be included? While outlining must haves should be short and specific – i.e. not drafted messaging – it’s helpful to define any elements you want to see in the content.

No gos

Are there messaging or design approaches that don’t work well with your audience? Are any terms politically sensitive? Have you had any recent complaints from your users?

If any specific words or approaches are no gos, include them in your brief. This could be as simple as No negative emotions or Always say reductions not sale. This will save your creative spending time (and your money) on options that would be a no from the outset.

Sign off

Include a brief description or diagram of the sign off process. Is it one-to-one between yourself and the creative? Do a number of people need to review the content and at what stage?

If you’re negotiating rates with the creative, this will help define the scope of work. A single handover is very different to several rounds of feedbacks and iterations in terms of the work involved for the creative.

Resources

Do you have a style guide? Insight data? Keyword research? Signpost to any further reading that could be helpful or relevant.

Creative brief template

Questions for the product owner to answer when briefing a creative:

What’s the purpose of the content?

Who’s the audience? What channels will the content be on?

How will success be measured (KPIs)?

What elements need to be included?

What should be avoided?

Who needs to review the content? When?

What further resources could be helpful?

“It’s clear what side of the fence Google’s on; they’re banking on desktop traffic fading away, meaning the smart money rests on mobile-focused online marketing.” Jayson DeMers, Forbes

So now is definitely the time to review your sites mobile performance. Specifically, refining your copy for a clearer, more convincing journey that converts.

Perfect your microcopy

From the hamburger menu to the share icon, there’s an established visual language for mobile websites. This reduces the need for instructional copy, but means the few elements of microcopy you have must really add something.

Are the terms you’re using consistent with other sites your customers frequently visit? Are you making the most of established conventions like: view all, add to basket, buy now etc? Or are you needlessly using new terminology that doesn’t enhance the experience?

For mobile optimisation, keep your microcopy as short as possible, and I mean short. Cookie message running over two lines on mobile? Cut it. Buttons longer than three words? Shorten them. If you really consider the UX and microcopy, you can create a clear user journey with very few words.

Part of this is being consistent. If you use the term next in your buttons, use this throughout rather than mixing with proceed or the like. Similarly, if you prefer bag to basket use throughout. Consistent use of terms will help your user proceed quickly through the journey and keep your calls to actions short.

Don’t waste your customers’ time

Our increased mobile usage is in no small part down to multi tasking – using your phone while on a train, watching TV, out with your friends etc. This means site visits are often shorter and your customer’s tolerance of any delays shorter still.

Make every step in the journey count. Shorten form fields so you only capture absolutely essential information. Quickly give your customer a view all option so they can easily scroll through your mobile website without having to keep selecting the next page. Use cleverly placed microcopy to quickly get them to previous items of interest or content related to earlier visits.

Remove any redundant error messages and avoid displaying errors until the user has pressed submit. Prompts that appear the moment you enter text quickly get annoying – give the user the chance to complete the task correctly before telling them it’s wrong. Make sure any error messages are displayed in context. If you make the user work to discover what element of a form is wrong, they’ll likely just abandon the basket.

Remember, it takes more effort to enter details on mobile, so don’t frustrate and lengthen this process. Use your copy to get users to the point of interest as fast as possible.

Include copy in your user testing

Too often the visual design is the focus of user testing, without considering the impact of the copy too. Your user won’t make this distinction. Even the most beautiful, well laid out mobile website will be a poor user experience without clear copy.

Test button copy variants to see what your users react to. Sometimes a very small change like Checkout to Checkout now can significantly impact conversions.

Reduce the instructional and error copy to the absolute minimum, then test if there’s any confusion. Often the assumption is that the user needs more instructional guidance than they do. People are now very used to using mobile websites, so if your UI is consistent, they’re unlikely to need guiding through every step.

In any follow-up questionnaires or interviews, make sure you address copy. See if there were any pain points or elements they found particularly helpful. Further test any hypotheses from your user testing with A/B split tests at beta stage.

The key takeaway is to think of copywriting as content design. It needs to be an integral part of your mobile website optimisation, considered at every stage, from concept to user testing.

While it’s not as sexy as social media, or as thrilling as above the line, email should be a priority in your marketing strategy. And the good news is it’s straightforward to optimise, with simple tricks and changes quickly impacting engagement.

So here are my top email marketing tips from my recent experience as an email channel lead and strategist.

Personalise

If you’re sending blanket emails to huge lists, stop. Spammy, irrelevant emails will quickly lose your customers’ interest and it can be very hard to win them back.

Segment your audience so that you can send more personalised content. Do you know what they’ve bought before? Email them about similar products or sales. Did you capture their email when they expressed an interest in a particular topic or issue? Contact them about that, gradually introducing related, relevant content.

If segmentation is currently out of scope, at the very least you should be personalising your emails by seeding the recipient’s name into the content. You should also send relationship building emails by personally thanking them for completing any actions.

Ideally, only email a customer when you have rich, relevant content to send that you think will be of specific interest to them.

Design for mobile

Mobile first is nothing new, but it doesn’t always filter down to email strategy. Is your email template responsive and optimised for display on mobile? Is your copy short, so that it can be digested on mobile screens? Can your call to action be easily completed on mobile?

Your customers take their mobile everywhere, increasingly researching products and completing transactions on their phones. So make sure that your email content works seamlessly for your growing mobile audience.

Test, test, test

Your audience is your audience. So while general marketing advice is helpful, what your audience specifically reacts to should always impact your email strategy.

A/B tests are easy to set up in most email content management systems and are a quick way to see if a new idea’s cutting it. Think you need to shout more about discounts? Split test this against an email that emphasises quality. Your audience may be more interested in the excellence of your product and put off if it appears cheap.

I run a 24-hour subject line test when an email’s going to an audience large enough to gather good insight. This enables me to not only build a reference bank of effective subject lines, but also continually see what my audience reacts to at any given time.

Be specific about send times

Think about when your audience is most likely to open your email and take your call to action. Hypothesise the best send day and time and test, test, test it.

You may already have a send time that performs well, but you can be more specific. Can you segment your audience by age? For example, sending an email at 11am to retirees and 6pm to catch young urbanites on their way home from work. Do you have an audience that’s most likely to open an email during the week and one that would react better to a weekend send?

When even a small increase in open rate can dramatically impact revenue, it’s well worth continually optimising send times.

Keep subject lines short

This year, more and more of your emails will be opened on mobile, soon outstripping desktop if they don’t already.

Inboxes viewed on mobile show even less of the subject and preview lines. You’ve got even fewer characters (about 27 to fit most mobile screens) to get your customer’s attention. So keep your subject lines short.

Over the past year, I’ve seen short – even one word – subject lines consistently win in split tests. Suggesting that they’re intriguing, attention grabbing and hook that key mobile audience.

Remember the preview line

On key email clients, like Gmail, the first line of your email will be shown next to the subject line in the inbox. This is a great opportunity to grab your customer’s attention, so should always be considered in tandem with the subject line.

It’s a chance to introduce personalisation, integrating the customer’s name or bespoke CTA in the opening sentence. Or to elaborate on a one word subject line, quickly showing why the email’s of interest.

Whatever you do, make sure your email template doesn’t just populate the preview line with autotext like ‘Email not displaying properly?’ or ‘View text only version’.

Don’t be afraid to use gifs and emojis

During my time as a lead email strategist, I saw our audience respond really well to gifs and emojis.

Used in a subject line, an emoji can help your email stand out in the inbox. It can add a sense of fun and intrigue that will get your customer to open the email.

You can win over sceptical stakeholders by using an emoji in several subject line split tests. You’ll then have a bank of evidence to show how your specific audience reacts to them.

Gifs can be a great piece of value-adding content. Thank your audience with a gif that delights. Convey stats or multiple-messaging in a quick, fun way. Jump on a trend with a meme-style gif.

Not all email clients will display gifs, but that shouldn’t put you off. As long as the first frame makes sense as a static image you can send a gif, as any unsupported clients will just show this first frame.

As with all good content, the context should be considered. Emojis and gifs are light-hearted so shouldn’t be used when they’d make your messaging seem insincere or inappropriately flippant.

If you’d like some help with your email or other content strategy, please get in touch.