Writing UX Copy that Feels Effortless to Read

There are plenty of great books and guides written about how to create engaging marketing offers or landing pages.

This isn’t that.

You’ll learn how to write smarter CTAs, cleaner titles, and copy that works without users even noticing.

Design systems help maintain consistency between font styles (e.g., weights, size, line heights), and they’re relatively easy to stick to, partly because the rules are easy to define.

But it’s far less common to see well-defined rulesets for the formatting of titles themselves.

For example, think about these 3 consecutive pages in an account creation flow:

This type of conversational title is an example where there is no obvious pattern.

A less extreme example could be this:

And the problem with unpredictable sentence structure is that you’re forcing your users to burn brain-calories every time they try and read them.

Which is almost always a waste.

Instead, you can leverage a form of intentional 🕶 Content Blindness.

By sticking to a sentence structure (e.g., “Enter your ____”), users will naturally, without thinking, start skim-reading the titles.

The predictability feels comfortable.

Content writers usually ignore this shortcut either unintentionally, or in an attempt to sound friendly.

But my advice is that titles serve a purpose.

Be predictable with your titles, be boring, and nobody will mention it—that’s the point.

The purpose of a call-to-action (e.g., a button or link) is to tell the user what is about to happen.

That's hardly an insight. 

And yet we still end up with so many vague “Continue”, “Submit” and “Okay” actions being used in high-impact moments.

For example, imagine that you’re in the final stage of a checkout.

Which of these 3 options do you feel most comfortable clicking on?

The nuance here is that over-sharing can create friction.

For example, “Pay $100 today” is more specific (you’re paying today), but creates ambiguity about whether you’re paying anything else in the future.

(This is called 🐨 Fuzzy Context).

But it doesn't have to be price-oriented, nor does it only work in a checkout.

For example, Etsy will include the city where you're sending an item.

This works because a high percentage of their users are purchasing gifts, sending them elsewhere.

Or, BeReal, which asks you for your date of birth, and then confirms your age in the CTA itself.

P.S., I cover loading states in this Cheatsheet.

But, it's exactly the same reason why you feel more in control while waiting for a specific action to take place, rather than a generic one.

Be specific. Set realistic expectations.

As a rule of thumb: use fewer words.

Okay, it’s not that simple. There’s a contradictory relationship between two UX principles:

• Add lots of context
• Be very concise

Take a look at the example below:

We (designers) might not like to admit this, but it often starts inside Figma.

A designer mocks up an initial wireframe, like this:

You may even roughly work out what you want to say.

That template is refined, images are chosen and then it’s someone’s job to write the copy.

Except you end up with visual problems if the subtitle is too short, or too long. 

The images don't sit right, and the pages look bad.

What if you don't need three bullet points, you only need one?

You then frame the task as "what should I say in these 3 sentences", rather than "can this be a single bullet point?".

Product teams regularly A/B test combinations of adverts and specific landing pages.

This acts as a very wide entry funnel.

These benefits can transcend the marketing pages, and act as a motivation to complete that process.

For example, Sentry will highlight the benefits that you were just looking at, on their upsell screen.

Similarly, if you decided to upgrade your Twitch account after watching a specific streamer, that person's name will be shown during the account creation process.

It's an anchor, reminding you of your initial motivation.

Let’s imagine that you run Airbnb, and you’re experimenting with a few combinations of adverts, landing pages and conversion funnels:

It wouldn't be optimised if all of these users flowed into a single “generic black box” of sign up, with an unrelated and pre-defined exit journey.

i.e., if after they've created an account, they go into the "business-as-usual" onboarding.

With redirects, dynamic content and 🍕 Progressive Disclosure, you can start to customise the mid/end funnels just as much as you would the entry.

And your core business metrics (churn & conversion rates) will thank you.