WHY WON’T YOU CLICK ME? The story of a sad little button.
Microcopy might not sound very exciting. In fact, its very name makes it sound tiny, unimportant, forgettable. But oh boy, don’t let its name lead you astray.
When you’re writing anything that lives on the internet, microcopy is one of the biggest weapons in your arsenal.
This blog is going to show you why, by discussing the following:
What microcopy actually is
What makes a button better
Why people will ignore a CTA (call to action).
How you can write microcopy that will make a massive impact. Oi oi.
Come with me on a journey of the tiniest proportions and see why small words can make a big difference to your customers’ online journey. It’ll be loads more fun than I’ve just made it sound.
Microcopy sounds made up. What is it?
Microcopy is exactly what the name suggests: regular copy, just loads smaller. It’s the little bits of copy that appear on websites, including things like:
Buttons
Error messaging
Picture captions
Legal jargon
Order confirmation pages
Tooltips (password hints, form guides, that sort of stuff)
Cookie pop-ups.
While they might not sound like the most important things you’ll read online, they actually play some of the most crucial roles. Let’s take tooltips, for example. You’ve probably seen these as you’re filling in order forms or entering your details to sign up for something. A good tooltip will tell you things like how complicated your password needs to be, how you should enter your address, why your username isn’t working.
Useful stuff. Stuff that if you kept getting wrong would start to annoy you.
In this instance, microcopy can be the difference between you completing an order or going elsewhere. It can cost a business sales and lose them money.
Captions beneath images are also vital for accessibility reasons. While you might be able to see an image with your eyes, someone with visual impairments might not. For them, a caption that can be read by their screen reader is very useful.
When it comes to buttons, microcopy can be key. It will be the thing customers click to research products. The thing they click to place an order. The thing they click to pay you cash dollars.
Little buttons are big business.
How can I make my buttons better?
Contrary to what the Pussycat Dolls once said, you should actually keep your buttons under tight control.
First, let’s talk about what makes a really bad button and why.
Bad buttons aren’t descriptive. They don’t tell you what clicking them will achieve. This gives you no real incentive to push them, no clear understanding of where clicking them will take you, and no help if you rely on assistive technology to navigate the internet.
You see lots of bad buttons online. They often say something like, ‘Read more,’ or ‘Discover more,’ or ‘Learn more.’
Lots of promises of more, but no idea about what you’ll be getting more of. More content? More products? More more more, how do you like it?
While this might be fine for you and I, again it’s rubbish if you can’t see what the button relates to. If you’re tabbing through a website and relying on a button to help guide your journey, ‘Read more’ will just get you lost.
The same is true for people who just scroll through websites to find what they’re looking for, ie: everyone who uses the internet. While we might hope people read every word we’ve painstakingly researched, typed, reviewed and refreshed, they almost certainly don’t. Life’s short.
Instead your customers are scrolling to the bits they see as important. Often if they already know their intent, the most important thing for them will be a button. On a contact page, they want a button that lets them, you know, contact you. On a product page, they want a button that lets them buy the product.
If your button says ‘Learn more’ it won’t get as many clicks as one that says ‘Buy this product’.
A good button, on the other hand, is clear. It says the action you will achieve by clicking it. It leaves you in no doubt where you’ll end up if you tap your mouse or thumb.
On a product page it might say, ‘Add to bag’.
On a blog that briefly mentions accessibility, it might say ‘read my blog about making buttons more accessible’.
It’ll do what you expect it to do.
What if a call to action is seeing no action at all?
A CTA, whether that’s a button or a text link, is something you want people to click. And I’m guessing you want them to click it for a reason. That might be because you want to share more information with them, or you want to get them to sign up for something, or you want them to part ways with some cold, hard cash.
Whatever your reason, a CTA is designed to drive action. Clicking action. If you write bad ones, no clicking will happen and no action will be accomplished.
There are a few reasons why people might ignore your precious CTAs, and they’re all so easily avoidable that I’m basically robbing a living by fixing them for you. (According to several members of my family, I’m robbing a living in general.)
They’re in a bad place. A CTA should go a) at the top of your content, for people who know what they’re looking for and don’t want to scroll, and b) at the end of your content for those who’ve read everything. Don’t hide an important CTA in the middle of your page. That’s prime scrolling-past territory.
They’re easily missed. Ever read something where one word is linked? Ever thought, “That little link looks important, I should probably click it’? No, neither has anyone else in the history of things being online.
They’re not descriptive. CTAs should say what clicking them will achieve. I ain’t clicking on shit that expects me to do any guesswork.
They’re not in a different colour. Make your CTA stand out. A text link that’s the same colour as all your other copy will blend right into the background and be ignored by everyone. If you’re bound by a Squarespace template like I am, bolding them and underlining them will also be helpful.
Fix these simple issues and you’ll have people clicking so hard their fingers grow abs.
Wanna write better microcopy, do ya?
Not all microcopy is designed to convert. For example, cookie pop-ups are just designed to annoy, while legalese is designed to stop anyone taking you to court. But for the copy that’s there to sell, you’ll stand a better chance of success by writing it with the end goal in mind.
For tooltip copy, the end goal is helping your customers. Your microcopy should be clear and concise and eliminate any potential pain points. On a password entry form, for example, it should say which characters aren’t allowed, which characters make a password stronger, or how long a password needs to be.
For buttons, it should describe the action. What will clicking this button do? Write that down. Make the button say what it does.
People aren’t idiots, but when it comes to buttons you should assume they’re at least a little bit thick. Assume they know nothing about your website, that they’ve never brought anything online before, that they’re reading it on their mobile phones in the bath and they can’t be arsed to do any thinking.
Make the button clear enough for a bathing idiot to understand and it will work great for everyone else.
I’m 6ft 1” and 13 stone, but I can still write tiny words well.
I’ve made loads of people click loads of buttons through the magic of good copywriting. It might seem like a small thing, but do it right and you’ll notice a massive difference across your website. Promise that’s the last of the ‘little v big’ lines now.