Microcopy & Editor Organization Principles

Last Updated October 9, 2024

Important Note

Both UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) design principles create a seamless and intuitive user journey, enhancing user satisfaction and engagement.

This article focuses on principles for microcopy and UX best practices. For information on UI design, visit Content Branding & UI Design.

Brief Overview

Standardizing the organization and naming conventions for content in the WalkMe Editor is one of the simplest steps you can take to start formalizing your Digital Adoption approach at the project level. This includes rules for naming and classifying folders, subfolders, and individual WalkMe items in both the WalkMe Editor and WalkMe Insights.

This article will cover internal naming conventions (for keeping your Editor organized) as well as microcopy (the bits of text that guide your end-users through an interface, such as on on button labels, error messages, form instructions)

Good microcopy (bits of text that guides users through an interface) helps convey a brand's voice and personality, making the user experience more engaging and enjoyable.

Remember: When you standardize, you are also accountable to those new standards being adopted. Designate a method of ensuring compliance with your new standards, such as checkpoints prior to publishing, and an owner, for example, the Project Lead or Program Manager.

How This Impacts Your Program

Benefits of operationalizing

Reduces likelihood of user errors and frustration
Makes digital product more intuitive and user friendly

Risks of not operationalizing

User confusion
Increased support requests
Loss of trust
Brand inconsistency
Accessibility issues

Internal Naming Conventions

General Best Practices

Avoid adding the WalkMe application type (Smart Walk-Thru, SmartTip, etc.) as part of the name. Here are examples of optimized naming conventions by item type:

Smart Walk-Thru

Instead of: Create an Opportunity SWT
Use: Create an Opportunity

SmartTip

Instead of: Help Me
Use: Opportunity Page Mini-Menu

Launcher

Instead of: Invisible Launcher
Use: Opportunity “Save” Validation Gate

Items in the WalkMe Menu

Keep in mind that items added to the WalkMe Menu, for example Smart Walk-Thrus or resources, will display the name given in the editor to users as well. You can use internal naming conventions to give more context to your internal team.

Note: Smart Walk-Thrus and Resources can have internal only naming added to them to provide more context to builders.

Any text within two “|” characters at the beginning of the WalkMe item, will only be visible within the editor to internal WalkMe users. The text outside of these characters, will be visible to everyone, including your end-users.

Example:

|Version 1.0|Create an Opportunity will appear in the menu as Create an Opportunity.

Engaged Elements & Tracked Events

Clear and consistent naming conventions are especially important if you are sending Tracked Events and/or Engaged Elements data to IT or Product stakeholders. This can reduce confusion and eliminate need for extra communication between stakeholders and the Digital Adoption team.

Behavioral analytics softwares like Segment and Mixpanel promote the Object - Action model to help ensure your Engaged Elements and/or Tracked Events are concise, consistent, and easy to understand.

Given the complexity of many of the systems you may be working with (compared to a mobile application, or consumer application) we recommend calling out the specific Process as well. Use the Process - Object - Action framework.

Here are examples of Tracked Events using the Process - Object - Action framework:

Invoicing - Request new PO Form - Page View
Invoicing - Request new PO Form - Clicked
Invoicing - Submit new PO Form - Clicked

Microcopy

These small pieces of text play a significant role in enhancing the overall user experience.

See Download Templates & Tools below to download WalkMe's microcopy best practices and watch this Tip Tuesday video for tips from a WalkMe Build expert.

Editor Folder Management

Learn more about Editor Folder functionality here.

Best practices here include:

Standardize folder types by module or process instead of by Builder or phase
Standardize abbreviations
Consider your extent of subfolder use (set up sparingly with maintenance and potential changing Builders in mind)

Download Templates & Tools

Microcopy Best Practices - Sample SOP

Includes eight (8) microcopy tips and examples of do's/don'ts for each. Build on this guide to create a list of standard WalkMe microcopy principles for your DAP Builders.

Download here.

Get Started: Checklist to Standardize

The following are considerations when creating a Standard Operating Procedure in this area:

Naming Conventions Checklist

☐ What are my standards for naming individual Folders & Subfolders?

☐ What are my standards for naming individual WalkMe items (including Engaged Elements)?

☐ Have I considered that some deployable names are visible to my end-user in the menu?

☐ What are my standards for naming Tracked Events in Insights?

☐ What are my standards for naming Segmentation tags?

☐ What are my standards for naming Adoption Projects?

☐ What are my standards for naming Reports when using the Report Builder?

Pre-Publish Checkpoints Checklist

☐ What is my process for ensuring solutions abide by these standards?

☐ Who is responsible for checking the solutions, and at what stage of the process?

☐ What is my process for auditing my Editor(s) after go-live to ensure they are compliant? How often does this type of review happen?

Administration Checklist

☐ How are these procedures documented to prioritize scale and reduce administrative time?

☐ How often are they reviewed?

☐ Who is responsible for enforcing them?

☐ If there are proposed changes to the procedures, who approves those changes?

☐ How will we know if the rollout of these standards has been successful? Do we have a clear way to measure success? Do we have a clear feedback loop?

☐ If there are changes/additions to these procedures, who is responsible for communicating them? How are the changes communicated/who are they communicated to?

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