These are examples of troublesome microcopy I’ve encountered online. I’ve rewritten them to make them clear, concise, and useful. These are not published examples. I’m just including them to show how I would improve the messages.
Non-existent state of being
This copy appears on the webpage of a community theater that shut down during Covid. A user attempting to learn about the theater or purchase tickets to upcoming shows will be annoyed and frustrated.
While there are no solid, public plans, the theater is hoping to reopen in the future. I wrote the following message to explain why there’s no content on the site, to provide hope for the future, and to give visitors a step they can take to learn more.
What I did: I removed the confusing text from the message and changed it to something that makes sense to the average user.
Undefined Error
This troubling error message popped up after I purchased a new tablet from Lenovo’s website. I felt confused and concerned that I was going to miss out on the sale price I had secured and, worse, that Lenovo had taken my money but would not send me a product.
Here’s my first revision:
Upon reflection, I don’t like the way “our” takes responsibility for the problem, which could be originating with the customer. I don’t want Lenovo to place blame on the customer, but I also don’t want it to seem like there’s something wrong with Lenovo’s servers. In the second iteration, I changed the word our to “this,” which doesn’t assign blame anywhere.
What I did: I revised the copy to explain the error and give the user something to do to fix the problem. I used “sorry” to express regret and an explanation for the problem
I included the “don’t worry” line to reassure the customer that everything is okay.
My second revision takes some of the responsibility, but not all of it. It gives the user something to do (refresh) and it reassures and provides proof (emailed receipt) that everything is okay.
Search button copy and location
This is the mobile homepage of my local library. I often go there to check the catalog and reserve books. The problem is that it is difficult to search the catalog for titles or other keywords.
- Unfortunately, the top search box does not return book titles. Instead, it searches the city site and returns irrelevant information.
- The Find Books link also returns frustrating results. It returns a categorized list of links to librarian-suggested titles, but there’s no way to search for a specific title.
- Similarly, My Account is also frustrating. You can see what you have taken out or put on hold, but you have to go several levels deep to search for a specific title.
- In fact, the only way to search for a title from the homepage is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the site to the Search Our Catalog box.
I reworked the search functions in Figma to make them more user-friendly and to eliminate the search pain point. Here’s my first revision:
While I’d made the search boxes consistent, the layout is awkward and it draws attention to the unnecessary citywide search feature using top real estate on the library page.
This version still wasn’t right, so I tweaked it again.
Revision #1: I added more specific copy to the top search box so that users wouldn’t be frustrated by searching for book results and getting results of city meetings and documents.
I moved the hidden, bottom search button to a more logical and visible spot so that users would see when browsing library services and pick it instead of a frustrating choice.
I also changed to text on the Find Books button to Librarians’ Favorites so that it’s clear that you’ll find recommendations.
The Librarians’ Favorites and the My Account buttons switched places because a user is more likely to be looking for their account or for a specific book than for several layers of listed text.
Revision #2: I eliminated the city search box, which makes the page cleaner and makes it even easier to find a book.
I also changed to copy in the Visit Us box. I eliminated the shouty all caps, made the content more conversational, and cut the vague “mobile library services.”
In future iterations, I would fix the farmers’ market graphic and text so that it displays properly on mobile devices.