BRAG KLAXON: I wrote an entire innovative, digital journey for a critical, high-profile project in an hour. The content only needed minor edits once because the journey to scaled down to ensure delivery this side of Christmas. This is how you do it.
Personally, I think writing customer journeys, like digitally reporting a car breakdown, from landing page to confirmation messages is a great starting point for a junior copywriter trying to get to grips with writing clear, pithy and friendly instructional and explanation copy.
It also helps get your head around the fact that digital is a journey, so you need to take into account:
- Multiple entry points
- Error messages
- Fields in forms
- Back-end capability
- Legals
- Confirmation messages
- Next best action
There also needs to be a clear objective, normally centred around stopping calls in the call centres, improving drop-off rates and increasing conversion.
When writing for these journeys, we're so ingrained in writing 'submit' and 'please type here' and 'we require' that we forget that this is as integral to the brand's tone of voice than any product page, marketing email, social media post or content marketing piece. Remember:
Be friendly - just because it's instructional, doesn't mean you can't be chatty, like 'Just pop in your details and we'll get back to you in a jiffy'
Brevity doesn't mean brevity - yes you're restricted on space, but if you need more room to explain something clearly, then chat to your local UX designer to see what can be done.
Only say what needs to be said - once you've meaning and tone, the rest is superfluous
