We at Frontitude think that crafting great UX copy is one of the best investments a product/UX team can make. We noticed that there are not so many up-to-date examples out there, that show how UX copy affects business metrics. We’ve decided to accept the challenge and talked with some of the most innovative product companies which measure their UX copy success.
The result is this new blog post, that showcases real-world examples that weren’t published before, on how great UX copy can move the needle when it comes to business metrics.
Case study #1: Increase user retention by speaking your users’ language
Preply is an educational platform that connects more than 100,000 students with tutors worldwide for personalized language lessons online. Viktoria Kosiak, a UX Writer at Preply, describes how they improved key metrics of their business by testing and changing UX copy at the heart of their product.
Viktoria: “A core part of Preply’s product is a system for scheduling lessons. Students have two ways of planning their learning: schedule individual lessons by choosing each date manually (One-by-one), or set up a recurring routine where lessons are scheduled automatically each week (Weekly).”
“We believe that learning is effective when it’s regular. Plus, students with a weekly schedule are the ones with better retention, so promoting weekly lessons has always been in the best interest of our business.”
“The problem was that the number of scheduled weekly lessons was lower than we expected. According to the Features vs. Benefits approach, Weekly lessons is focused on the way the feature works, rather than the user benefit.”
“To focus more clearly on the benefits of a weekly schedule, our solution was to change the copy from Weekly lessons to Regular lessons. We also knew from user interviews that our customers used the word regular to speak positively about forming a learning habit. Under this test, we also changed One-by-one lessons to Single lessons because we thought it would be easier to understand when seen next to Regular lessons.”
Business impact
The Preply team reports a significant increase of 11%(!) in the number of regular lessons scheduled. Also, they’ve identified a significant increase of 7.8% in one of their key business metrics: hours bought on the platform.
Case study #2: Increase click-through rate (CTR) by adding clarity
Fundbox is a B2B fintech startup that offers a revolving line of credit to small- and medium-sized businesses in the US. Yael Ben-David, a UX Writer at Fundbox, describes how the company increased revenue with a few copy changes.
Yael: “In our product, the most important touchpoint for revenue, is the Draw Pane, which is a dialogue users use to draw funds. It can be opened through the user dashboard using a button with the label Draw Funds. It seemed like users were too scared to click it since it sounded very final. They thought it would immediately pull funds into their account and they wouldn't have a chance to review the repayment terms first. They never finished drawing because of that.”
“To make it clearer, we changed the CTA from Draw Funds to Review & Draw.”
Business impact
One of the core metrics at Fundbox is whether users draw funds in the first 7 days after approval, which is a strong indicator of customer LTV (lifetime value). After the change in the copy, a significant improvement was shown in this metric, and in credit draws overall.
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Case study #3: Reduce sales team calls by being more informative
It’s Fundbox again! This time, a few copy changes saved a lot of manual labor for their sales team. Yael is here again to tell us about it.
Yael: “As I mentioned before, the Draw Pane is a critical point in our product, which is where users draw funds. Many users didn’t understand the terms for repaying the funds, and so obviously, they didn’t draw. Reps would then reach out to explain the terms on the phone, and then the user would be comfortable drawing.”
“We ran an A/B test:
- We removed some of the copy from the tab headers to prevent confusion—users weren’t sure whether we were showing the weekly payment (principal + fees) or only the fees. The information appears lower down in a clearer way so we didn’t need it here, too.
- We added a tooltip to preempt questions and hesitations users had around the weekly fees.
- We added Max to total repayment since there is a way that users can save on fees and actually never end up paying the full amount of fees. Without saying Max it looked like no matter what, they would end up paying back this whole amount.”
Business impact
The sales team reported a significant decrease in the time they spent helping users through this point of friction.
Case study #4: Reduce support tickets by giving a heads up
Gong.io provides a revenue intelligence platform created to improve calls and demos for sales teams. Naomi Papoushado, the Galactic Viceroy of Content Excellence at Gong.io, tells us how, by adding a piece of informational UX copy, they solved a technical issue that caused plenty of support tickets.
Naomi: “We got a bunch of support tickets where users were trying to associate a call with an account when they were a CRM Lead and not a CRM Contact.”
“People wanted to assign the call to a CRM Lead, but the option to associate the call was unavailable. They couldn’t understand why it wasn't working. So they’d open a ticket for the Support team, thinking it’s a bug in our system.”
“The Support team appealed to us (the UX team) about this issue. We chose to solve this by giving users a clear message explaining which accounts can be assigned with the call, and how to resolve the issue.”
Business impact
A short time after this change was released, Gong.io’s Support team reported zero(!) support tickets opened for this specific issue. It’s amazing how a small piece of text can save users so much frustration, and the Support team precious time.
Bottom line
The rise of UX Writing, which is taking place these days, is not just a flash in the pan. It’s proven that investing in creating great UX copy is a positive ROI deal. The examples above show that great UX copy not only enhances the user experience, but can also release bottlenecks at the core of your product and move the needle when it comes to business metrics.
Looking for more examples like those we showed here? Asking yourself how you can deliver great UX copy at scale? We’re going to write about it in-depth in future posts. If you’re finding this interesting, subscribe below to get new posts to your inbox right when they’re out of the oven.
