Microcopy is the writing that appears inside a product: the text on a button, the placeholder in a form field, the error message when something goes wrong, the confirmation text after a transaction completes. These words are usually treated as an afterthought, written by a developer who needed something on the screen and typed the first thing that came to mind.
The problem is that microcopy is often the most consequential copy in the entire product. A button that says âSubmitâ produces worse conversion than one that says âStart my free trialâ, which produces worse conversion than one that says the specific thing the user is trying to achieve at that moment. An error message that says âInvalid inputâ destroys trust. One that explains what is wrong and how to fix it saves the transaction.
UX writing is a specialisation within copywriting that requires understanding of how people read when they are trying to complete a task, as opposed to when they are browsing. Users in a product flow scan, not read. They are goal-oriented, often impatient, and will abandon a flow at the first sign of confusion. Good microcopy removes every possible source of friction from that journey.
For a UX writing project, I work through your product with a systematic audit, documenting every piece of interface text against a set of quality criteria: clarity, specificity, consistency, and user-centricity. I then rewrite everything that fails the audit and deliver a full microcopy guide that your team can use for all future interface text decisions.
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