The fastest way to kill a good design: copy that's too specific.
I rewrote a full SaaS site this week, and one lesson stood out.
The design was solid.
The copy said, "built for trucking operations."
Every visitor who isn't in trucking has left.
Here's the rule I follow now:
→ Copy should be concrete enough to feel real
→ But open enough that people see their own product in it
→ "Automate documents, messages, and reports" beats naming one industry
→ Specificity sells to one buyer. Projection sells to all of them.
Designers obsess over spacing and type.
Then paste in the copy that undoes all of it.
Copy is not the content. Copy is part of the design.
Do you write your own copy, or design around placeholder text?
The fastest way to kill a good design: copy that's too specific.
I rewrote a full SaaS site this week, and one lesson stood out.
The design was solid.
The copy said, "built for trucking operations."
Every visitor who isn't in trucking has left.
Here's the rule I follow now:
→ Copy should be concrete enough to feel real
→ But open enough that people see their own product in it
→ "Automate documents, messages, and reports" beats naming one industry
→ Specificity sells to one buyer. Projection sells to all of them.
Designers obsess over spacing and type.
Then paste in the copy that undoes all of it.
Copy is not the content. Copy is part of the design.
Do you write your own copy, or design around placeholder text?
