How can user research fit into a copywriting team?

Question

Our content based website has a team that is responsible for writing and maintaining the content. The team's work is often ad-hoc and small in scope with tight deadlines. The future roadmap is not defined since priorities shift frequently.

So the problem we face is that despite the teams high level of output there are no projects for our researcher.

How can we fit user research into the team with the above constraints?

Answer 1

Just sharing my few cents’ worth.

I feel that user research roles can come in place to achieve 2 objectives, namely

1. To research on what types of content perform better on your website and why/how they are more popular with your readers
2. To research on ideas and map out a possible future road map for the team to follow

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

The main UX finding to those who produce written content is that users (mostly) don't read all those nicely crafted words.

Most times users are 'skimming' text. So text has to be written and formatted to be skimmed.