Magical products through masterful words.
While most professional writing roles might have similar tasks and responsibilities, there are different skills and requirements for UX writer jobs. Irrespective of your current writing experience, it’s important to note that your skills can easily be adapted to land you a UX writing gig.
If exploring the UX writing career path, consider upskilling by learning about graphic design software. The technology is widely used in user experience design and will give you a competitive advantage.
The primary goal of UX writing is to help users have the best possible experience with the content they are reading or listening to. A UX writer specifically writes to improve user experience – usually within a digital medium. User experience writers make your product or service more user-friendly.
UX writing is important because it prioritizes clarity and conciseness. It helps the user better navigate the website or software product by giving effective feedback or prompts to allow them to complete desired courses of action efficiently.
An essential part of the product and user roadmap, UX writing is an added layer that makes it easier for your customers to use your product or service. It takes extra care and attention. In other words, it’s a way to show your users that you understand their goals and pain points.
A UX writer is five steps ahead of a user, inferring the questions they may have that will keep them from taking the next step. Believe it or not, user-centered design isn’t limited to just the user interface. If an interface is confusing, users will ultimately look for instructions on how to navigate through it.
UX writers are either proficient in UX design or work closely with UX designers to create useful and meaningful copy that helps users complete their tasks. To deliver these outcomes, a UX writer has to understand the product in and out and often conduct user research.
We analyzed different UX writer job descriptions and found the main responsibilities and requirements for a UX writing role.
UX writing is a straightforward, no-fluff kind of writing. That's the primary difference between writing for marketing purposes versus writing for the user. Copywriting is mainly used for advertising and persuading the audience to try the product. UX writing serves as a guide for the user while interacting with the actual offering.
Whether you are writing for a website or mobile app, UX writing must be clear and consistent. The different use cases of UX writing range from creating microcopy for call-to-action buttons, push notifications, or error messages to delivering messaging and instructions on product pages. Since this content will be visible as product copy, providing specific, helpful, and relevant descriptions is imperative to optimize the user's experience.
UX writers do extensive user research to understand their target audience. This research can also include market and competitor analysis to get insights into what copy is being written and displayed on different interfaces.
An effective UX strategy requires UX writers to integrate research insights with design principles to create compelling product copy. This work is collaborative as writers partner up with UX designers to understand the user personas to know more about their motivations, goals, and problems.
Would you ever buy from a sales representative who doesn't know every aspect of what they're selling?
A UX writer uninformed about the product is similar to a rep who hasn't had effective sales enablement and training.
A UX writer must understand the product in-depth, such as its features and use cases. A large part of a UX writer's job is to align user and company goals by intuitively guiding the user through their product experience.
To convince users to use a product, UX writing must first understand why the product is the best choice to solve customer pain points and how it solves those problems. UX writers must be part of the product development journey from the ideation to product launch phases.
As with any user and product-centric role, UX writers need to be skilled at hard and soft skills to draft copy that results in a positive user experience and product interaction.
We've identified a few key skills recruiters often look for when hiring in UX writing.
UX writing can take many forms, including but not limited to CTAs, instructions, navigation buttons, confirmation messages, privacy information, loading screens, and 404 errors. Let’s look at the work of a UX writer in action to see how a few small tweaks can impact the user.
Airbnb’s UX writing successfully moves the customer further and further down the path toward purchasing without making them feel rushed.
Think about it, would you hit this “Book” button if that microcopy wasn’t there?
Airbnb understands that people want to get an idea of the “all-in” price, including taxes and fees, before they make a final decision.
With this prompt, Intuit MailChimp tells the customer that they understand the anxiety-ridden “Send” button. They want to alleviate the pressure as much as they can.
Now, instead of thinking, “I just sent that to our entire email list, I hope there weren’t any typos,” your user is left reassured and feeling warm and fuzzy - “Yes, high five monkey man, we did it!”
Error pages are frustrating, to say the least. But, it presents an opportunity for a UX writer to redirect the conversation and keep the user on their site. HubSpot does just that with its 404 page.
Turn that frown upside down with a clever message. But HubSpot’s UX writing isn’t only fun – it’s functional. It gives users other page options to navigate to, away from the error page, quickly leaving it behind in the user’s journey.
When looking for a UX writer position, browse through job boards to find the perfect opportunity. Companies might list these responsibilities under a different content or writing-related role.
When searching for “UX writer” jobs, many listing sites pull similar positions like:
Proficient writing is at the core of all writing-specific roles; thus, someone currently employed as a copywriter can apply for and successfully land UX writer jobs. Remember to brush up on the skills listed when designing your resume and/or portfolio.
The average salary for a UX writer is around $90,000 per year. The reported UX writer salaries range from $56,000 to $145,000, providing a large financial scope depending on the listed title, location, skills and qualifications, and market demand. The top end of this range is attributed to large tech companies with many different software products. The lower end is reported from content-related roles at smaller organizations.
UX writing is one of the most creative job roles that exist today. By combining the power of copywriting with UX principles, they ensure that users understand what businesses are selling while forming a connection with them.
Design teams across industries are adding UX writers to their all-star lineups because they know that words on-screen can make or break their interface. It's your time to shine.
UX writing is an integral part of the product design process. Learn more about its best practices and tools required to build a successful product for the end user.
This article was originally published in 2019. It has been updated with new information and data points.
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