When Writing Copy, Read The Room

Yesterday's post was on the importance of great copy on your product. I wanted to share a few additional notes.

The tone of the text you write needs to align with your brand and the situation at hand.

This doesn't mean that you need to sound "cool" & "casual" all the time.

Ex: your product is a marketing tool that helps people send out mass mailers. A user just clicked on the Dispatch tool but an error occurred.

Realize that users are anxious at this point as sending out a mass mailer can be nerve-wracking.

If you were to push an error message like "Whoops! Looks like we hit a wall there. Do you want to retry?", that's poor copy. Why?

1- That's just going to frustrate the user because the tone is insensitive &
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2- The message doesn't share what happened and how to rectify it

Imagine you were standing over the shoulder of a user who is a stranger to you. How would you speak to them?

What tone would you adopt if they got their aha moment? Sure, a celebratory tone.

What about when you'd like to suggest an improvement? Consultative, perhaps?

And what about in the time of error and failure? You'd empathize, clarify what happened and suggest next steps.

When writing copy, read the room.