This is part of the 15-day UX Writing Challenge presented by Daily UX Writing.
Scenario: A user is a working parent, and a big sports fan, in the midst of their favorite sports season, who can no longer attend games.
Challenge: Write a promotional screen for an app that lets a user choose teams, sends game reminders, real-time score updates and highlight videos.
Headline: 40 characters max
Body: 175 characters max
Button(s): 25 characters max
Context & Goals
I won’t lie and say that I knew what a “promotional screen” was. Is that like the homepage? Or maybe this is a copy that promotes the app when the user opens it for the first time and is asked to sign up? Such as Facebook’s sign up page:
Fortunately, Daily UX Writing has a page gives an example:
“Never miss a single touchdown. Follow your favorite college football teams and get gameday reminders, real-time scores and after game highlight reels and replays on demand.”
Essentially, from my understanding, a promotional screen is a copy that persuades the user to use the app by highlighting its most attractive features and benefits. Seems simple enough.
Let’s breakdown what are our goal is then.
Write a promotional copy for a sports app that will convince a first-time user to sign up and use our app.
To do this, we’ll need to highlight the benefits that our features provide to them.
Promotional Screen Concepts
Let’s be real, parenting is not easy, especially working parents. Their time is solely dedicated to work and their children; they rarely get time to themselves.
For working parents that are huge sports fans, we need to convince them that they can maintain their responsibilities without having to give up on their passions.
Here’s my idea for the copy:
Headline: Never Miss Your Favorite Teams Again
Body: Whether you’re at work or with the kids, stay updated with your favorite teams. See real-time scores and highlights. Whenever. Wherever. Sign up now and catch all the action.
It’s clear that our app was designed for users that don’t have the time to attend or even watch their favorite teams play in real time. We need to acknowledge this and address that issue head-on.
The headline assures the user that they’ll never feel that they’re missing out, even when they miss a game.
With the body, I wanted to acknowledge their issues before I presented the benefits of the app. By acknowledging our users’ main issues, we can empathize with them and illustrate that our app was made specifically for them. They’ll no longer feel like they have to watch the game itself to see the score and all the amazing moments. With our app, we convey to them that they can attend to their responsibilities without feeling like they’re missing out.
Conclusion
This challenge was fun but difficult. Prior to learning about UX Writing, I was dabbling in copywriting and this exercise allowed me to apply much of what I learned.
Headlines are difficult for me because I’m still learning how to capture an audience’s attention with just a few words.
The body itself was even harder because I’m not a sports guy. Yes, I know that I don’t exactly have to be someone that’s into sports to write about sports-related content, but it would help. As the authors of Writing is Designing said:
When you immerse yourself in someone else’s world, you begin to understand their needs so much better.
This mostly applies to the language that they use because in speaking the language that they understand, you can better connect with your users.
Let me know what you thought about this challenge. I’d love to read what headlines and body texts you would’ve come up with. And as always, I’d appreciate any feedback that you have for me. Thanks!
