Questions tagged [copywriting]
the art of writing promotional text to make an emotional impression on the reader, usually to encourage a purchase. Don't confuse with the [copyright] tag.
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Explaining complex terms
I'm working on a financial services project, which includes a questionnaire. Some of the terms used in this questionnaire are financial and won't make sense to some users , but in order to explain ...
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How to ask a confirmation question?
We often have to ask people to confirm an action. The usual text is:
"Are you sure that you want to _________?"
Are there any shorter but clear ways of asking this?
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Should a tagline be on all public pages?
I have a tagline that describes my site/business as you can see below. My question is whether this tagline should be on all public pages?
As far as I can see the benefit of it being on all pages is ...
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Should error messages apologize?
We are having a discussion on our team about an error message that says "Sorry, you do not have permission to access this feature. Please contact your administrator for assistance."
Is it ...
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Natural language vs. Tech language?
Redesign of eBay reminds me of an old debate I had with fellow UX designers: is natural language always better than artificial tech language (even if it addresses clear mental model)?
Let me give you ...
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What are the rules of using ellipsis on buttons
I read about the rules of using ellipsis (three dots ...) in a menu command:
Indicate a command that needs additional information (including a
confirmation) by adding an ellipsis at the end of ...
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What to do when customers search for "Cheap" when you want to convey "Quality"?
An ecom client that I am working with has an interesting SEO challenge. They sell products that they want to convey quality and value; however, the #1 thing searched for on Google, Bing, and their ...
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Why do we have OS names like Mountain Lion, Jellybean, and Quantal Quetzal instead of numbers?
Less of a pressing question and more a "what happened here"?
At some point in the past decade (most) OS's have switched over to these codenames for their versions with names like Mountain Lion, ...
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Managing copy during interaction & visual design
I'm about to begin a web architecture and design project that will have many pages with lots of content / copy across several different languages. One of the challenges is that for each geographical ...
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What info to put on a mobile app info site (2.5 min average site visit)
I'm building a mobile - optimized website for my iPhone app. The app is intended to help people with mood disorders, like depression and bipolar to track their moods, events in their life as well as ...
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The meaning of 'between'
We have a UI which allows the user to specify criteria for the selection of customer records, and there's been some debate about the meaning of the term 'between'. For instance when the user seeks to ...
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Does using bold font for keywords and key points increase readability of user manuals?
I find myself writing quite a lot of articles, user manual-like documents, as well as posting hundreds of questions on stackexchange sites.
Over time, I developed a certain style of writing, which ...
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Prompt user to edit an inline-edit field
Background
Using an edit-in-place field for users to provide their name.
Problem
The phrase "Type your name" imperatively indicates that users can (and should!) type their name. However, unless the ...
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Should we use 'Title Case' or 'Sentence case' for headlines and buttons?
I am wondering if we should use Title Case or Sentence case for buttons and headings in websites and web/mobile apps?
Title Case:
Manage my Account
Delete my Account
Sentence case:
Manage my account
...
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Long form sales page techniques and / or examples? [closed]
I've worked with a number of UX experts over the last several months and while I have resisted going down the "long form" path, they have circled me back around to this time after time without fail. ...
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What is the general best practice for bolding keywords in content?
For example:
In a product description in a store, what are the best practices for bolding a product name that appears in the product description?
In a Blog, should you bold keywords for SEO, emphasis ...
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Currently designing a "Help" page, what would be considered too-much help to see on one page?
The page for "help" within the site is designed well. The site totals about 40 questions, which has been reduced down from 86. My objective is to simplify the user experience for viewing/navigating ...
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A proper message for re-try
I am implementing a 're-try' feature on a P2P utility for the situation where the connection is broken, but I don't know what message is appropriate.
The problem is, the re-try can only be initiated ...
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A proper title for e-mail and website address together?
I am designing a journal and my native language is not English, though I have to have
the english translation for the same titles in my language. I have to put information of three companies in each ...
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Does personally signing automated communications provide any benefit/value?
I just ordered a few books from bookdepository and received a confirmation email for the order. The letter was signed by a person, "Kieron Smith":
Dear Firstname Lastname,
Thank you ever so ...
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Should we warn the user that data will lost immediately or during saving?
I have an interface for managing account fields in a web app like so:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
The premise is simple: Fields are of 2 types (public and ...
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Signing up for a site with a social network versus a form
I am designing a registration page for our site where we allow people to signup 3 different ways: Facebook, Twitter and also a manual signup form.
We want to drive people to use Facebook and Twitter ...
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Tagline: "Do this to obtain that" vs "Obtain that by doing this"?
For more readability, appeal and understanding, should a tagline for a site homepage say:
"Do this to obtain that"
or
"Obtain that by doing this" ?
In other words, which one should be first: goal ...
user15161
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Relative dates/times- Rounding and how accurate?
I was reading this question about formatting relative dates and times, but there are still some issue that I felt have not been addressed yet.
I would like to:
Keep relative times to just 1 unit, ...
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Why Do Long, Ugly Sales Pages Convert?
It seems impossible to avoid the litany of "snake oil" sales pages consisting of long, boring videos and endless (and I mean endless) text. These look like UX nightmares, and yet they're becoming ...
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The term "User Experience" in sales
This might be redundant, but I'm curious about the end user's experience when they read the phrase "User Experience".
I've seen a number of websites say that they design the best user experience, but ...
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What is an alternative way to display a very large number?
In my application I have a text field that should display numbers (representing money) ranging from 0 to 999 trillion.
The users of my application are the general public, so displaying a scientific ...
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User friendly language for notifications?
What is the most user friendly way to notify an user that "The items in the rows needs to be re-arranged"
What I have is
Re-sequencing items required, press update button
How can I make this ...
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«English version» or «English»?
If you want to switch to english, for me, the label with only «English» is good, but I think that giving context is better: «English version».
What do you think? I have only two languages and I have ...
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Microcopy for "all people"/"no special group"
In the editor of our new app you can add people to the project and assign them (editors/reviewers). When adding them to the project you can filter all users on the account by predefined user-groups (...
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How to request a third-party login within a seperate mobile application
I'm designing a mobile app that requires the user to log-in with their LinkedIn account.
I feel I might have cluttered too much info into it, but everything seems to be important.
I want the user to ...
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Is there a convention for identifying final vs. placeholder text in wireframes?
I'm working on a bunch of wireframes where I have a mix of near-final and copy-guide text.
Near-final copy are text that our visual designers should use in their designs verbatim, and copy-guides are ...
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Why are modern ads so fast-paced and flashy compared to older ones?
I once took a class in television production at my local cable studio, and one of our assignments was to go and watch TV with the sound off and pay attention to the ads. The lesson was to look at how ...
user4262
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Which grammatical person should I use when writing to the user?
Say a user is signed in to my website and looking at his dashboard which may have a section for his/her incoming messages.
Should I label that section "My incoming messages", "Your incoming messages" ...
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Button Names 'Click here' vs 'something else'
We're having internal arguments about how to label buttons with actions. Other folks in the internet teams, who aren't necessarily User-Focused, demanding that 'Action' buttons to simply read "click ...
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Is there a difference between "blocked" and "banned"?
I've been requested to make a UI that allows to block/ban users from logging in. In the wireframes I've been provided, they use the term "blocked". But I feel like a better term for this would be "...
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Best words to indicate appreciate/depreciate instead of like/dislike
we have designed a system that creates a personalized stream of (text based) content for users. In order for the system to adapt, the users have to constantly give some feedback based on whether a ...
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Wording for "select folder which we're going to create a folder in"
I'm working on an installer wizard, and one of the things which happens once the wizard is run is the creation of a folder based on your project name
We have a step in the wizard to choose where this ...
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Naming words that are grouped
We have multiple lists of words that have been grouped by our users. They use the groupings later to filter. We're having a hard time titling the Filter and the action of Grouping.
"Group" cannot be ...
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How to communicate foreign key constraints in a business application?
I have a business app with various business forms where users edit data. When a user deletes a record - it shows "FK_ABC_AA.. constraint violated, etc."
I want to do better than that and tell the ...
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How to indicate software is a trial?
I have this software which also has a Trial version (30 Days full features active).
What is the best position to add the word "Trial" to signal this version:
the header next to the logo - there is a ...
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During sign ups, how to best instill confidence that email addresses will be safe
Many sign up forms will ask you for an email address so that they can contact you.
Even the most minimal sign-up (other than no sign up) will need an email address to send you a validation email.
...
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Turn 403s into 404s?
I am currently working on a web application where there are different levels of access. Users can get access to some areas of the application, but may not be allowed to access another area.
The ...
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Should a sentence ending with a URL terminate with a period?
Suppose my web service needs to send a password recovery e-mail message to the user. The message will contain a link (with some disposable token). Something like:
To reset your password please ...
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Any alternative text labels for a "Race/Ethnicity" dropdown? [closed]
The phrase 'Race/Ethnicity' or "Race/Ethnic Origin" is used throughout various data reporting. It just looks so odd with a '/' slash. Any alternatives? Here are a few examples of the slash in 'real ...
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How to notify the user of a system error (out of their control)?
What's an easy-to-understand error message for situations where the error is a system error (out of the control of the user and cannot be fixed by the user)?
Here's a few that I came up with, but it'...
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Choose, set, or edit?
In the situation where someone has not yet chosen to set some optional data (such as their display name, gender, or birthday), which term is the better description for the action which they take to ...
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Can anyone suggest a way to label a default phone number?
I couldn't come up with much more than simply putting (Default) next to the number, which I'm not too fond of.
Example:
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What is a good text for a tooltip to explain a tour's intensity on a website?
I'm working in a website that will sells tours. Each tour has a physical intensity. We have a slider bar that represents that intensity. It goes from green - yellow - red. The current text that appear ...
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Should we use "please" for validation messages for e-commerce applications
When we build an e-commerce application (most probably a web application), input validation is one of the core concepts of these type of applications. When the validation fails, we need to provide a ...
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