Overview: Content creation & management

Content creation is more like building with Legos. You take different pieces and put them together to make something new. You start with a bunch of ideas, tools, and resources. Your job is to piece them together in a way that makes sense and connects with your audience. This means planning, organizing, and even redoing things.

Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn how users interact with the web and how to design effective web user experiences.

A growing directory of free articles, tools and resources to help you write clear, accessible content.

Readability in user experience (UX) design refers to how easily users can read and understand textual content. It is crucial for a positive user experience as it directly impacts how effectively users can consume information on a website or application. Designers aim to enhance readability via appropriate presentation and language to make sure user

What grade level should you be writing at? How do you determine your copy’s grade level?

Footers can be found at the bottom of almost every web page, and often take many forms, depending on the type of content on a website. Regardless of the form they take, their presence is critical (and highly underrated).

90% of that content is just digital noise. It's complex, confusing, and ultimately valueless to the audience. True content innovation requires the opposite approach. It's about simplifying and focusing on delivering maximum value. This is the content innovation paradox: Less complexity creates more value.

Premature error messages, aggressively styled fields, and unnecessarily disruptive system-status messages feel bad-mannered and increase cognitive load for users during otherwise simple tasks.

Why inclusive language matters Words hold power. Using inclusive language means you're thinking about: the impact of language, the origins of phrases and idioms before you use them, how you talk about people, characteristics and identities, how your own identity or experiences could create bias in your content.

UX Writing Top 20 practical tips to boost your designs 👇🔶 Be concise❌ You must log in to comment✅ Log in to comment🔶 Use active voice❌ The button should be clicked✅ Click the button🔶 Avoid jargon❌ System error (code 2234)✅ Log in error🔶 Be consistent❌ Add to cart vs. My bag✅ Add to bag vs. My bag🔶 Avoid double negatives❌ Unsubscribe not to receiv…

If you’d like to improve user experience, content design can help. But how? We have a few tricks up our sleeve, so I’d like to share with you a reference list of ways we can give users an experience which feels more intuitive and caters better to their needs.

Bad writing can be avoided by following Orwell’s 6 little rules. The problem is the absolute nature of Orwell’s rules. The first five all include either a “never” or an “always”. That's why Orwell himself doesn’t always obey them and The Economist's Johnson revised them.

Websites and apps are our modern equivalent of phones. You create them so that people can serve themselves. Make your site or app a good conversational partner.

A UI/UX designer focuses on the appearance of an interface and how users will use said interface. A content-first designer, a.k.a., a content designer or UX writer, will focus on the content users will interact with.

Content standards in design systems support a holistically consistent user experience and efficient collaboration between writers, content, and UI designers.

A few relevant, high-quality visuals placed next to associated text can boost users’ comprehension of your content and its memorability.

Cookie permissions need to follow the law and strike the balance between respecting user privacy and being user-friendly.

People often remember visuals better than words. Designers can leverage the picture-superiority effect to make their products memorable and learnable.

Scrolling, scanning, skipping: How do users consume content online? Here’s what you need to know about reading behavior and design strategies to prevent harmful scanning patterns.

From providing accurate context to creating a cohesive structure, each of these key principles can elevate your content designs and ensure you’re communicating effectively with your audience

How to communicate effectively when users fail and succeed (shared on LinkedIn by Vitaly Friedman)

If you're a marketer, manager, developer, designer or writer wanting to up your UX writing game, then these guides are right up your alley.

Techniques like summaries, bullet points, callouts, bolding, and helpful visuals improve comprehension and engagement with content exceeding 1,000 words.

How writing reframes our knowledge and drives our decisions. Our message is effectively drowning in a sea of organizational and semantic noise that is part and parcel of the product itself. how do we make this easier on the user? Nope… not empathy. Writing. Writing about anything presupposes some degree of understanding of the context.

This blog post was submitted to online course "Professional Communication: Business Writing and Storytelling" (Economist Education) . It was then adapted and used on an intranet. "Easy writing makes hard reading" - Ernest Hemingway "The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty" - John Steinbeck

In this guide, I’m going to teach you my step-by-step process for writing high-converting website copy.

Probably my biggest frustrations ... is the utter contempt they seem to hold content in. ... they won’t hire a professional copywriter to work on the content ... never teach content creators how to create appropriate web content.

Refrain from opening new browser windows. [...] Carefully examine the user’s context, task at hand, and next steps when deciding whether to open links to documents and external sites in the same or a new browser tab."

The Europa Web Guide is the official rulebook for the European Commission's web presence, covering editorial, legal, technical, visual and contractual aspects. All European Commission web sites must observe the rules and guidelines it contains. Web practitioners are invited to observe its contents and keep abreast of updates.

Writing tips from "Writing for the European Commission web presence"