what is copyright law and How Copywriting Can Benefit From User Research

 what is copyright law

Copyright law is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not absolute; they are limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property, applicable to any expressed representation of a creative work. Under US copyright law, however, legal protection attaches only to fixed representations in a tangible medium. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders. These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and "moral rights" such as attribution.

"International" Copyright

There is no such thing as an "international" copyright that automatically protects a work throughout the world. However, the most widely-adopted copyright treaty, the Berne Convention, states that once a work is protected in one of the Convention member countries, it is protected by copyright in all of them. As of mid-2004, 156 countries, including the U.S., belong to the Berne Convention.

Rules of Copyright:

The Copyright Act

Put simply – The Copyright Act 1994 is a set of guidelines that explains how published content can and can not be used. The general rule is: if it is published, it is copyright protected. The Copyright Act kicks in the moment you wish to copy, scan, save or share published material. As an honest, law abiding citizen, the important thing to know is how the law applies to you. 

Copyright Notice

This is a good place to start. The notice is often on the inside front cover (hard copies) or in the terms and conditions (if material is sourced online). If you wish to copy, save or share outside of what is permitted on the notice, or by law, you need to ask permission first. 

General Copying – Printed Material
You can copy without permission from an original if it is for: 

• Research
• Private study
• Criticism or review
• Reporting current events
• The amount copied should be deemed 'fair'. For example it might be fair for an individual to copy an entire poem or article if it is relevant to their study topic. On the other hand, it is unlikely to be fair to copy an entire book if only a section relates to the study. 

Education – Printed Material

• Teachers are permitted to copy the following from an original hardcopy: 
• A single copy (for lesson planning purposes)
• Multiple copies to up to 3% or 3 pages (whichever is greater)
• The section copied must not give away significant information ie chapter summaries. 

How Copywriting Can Benefit From User Research

I’ve often heard there are four stages along the road to competence: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Most of us begin our careers “unconsciously incompetent,” or unaware of how much we don’t know.I’ll never forget the first time I moved from unconscious to conscious incompetence. I was working as an office manager at a small software company, and having been impressed by my writing skills, the director of sales and marketing asked me to throw together a press release, welcoming the new CEO.

In this article, we’ll review ways to give copywriters the knowledge they need via user research. Specifically, we’ll look at which types of user research are most valuable to copywriters, and how they can get involved.

Content Strategy 

Copywriters write copy. They write text, microcopy, blurbs and articles. Content strategists, on the other hand, plan for the creation, curation and management of content, including — yes — copy, as well as video and images.

As a content strategist, I now do a lot of user research. Clients expect me to learn who is using their website or application. I create personas that show how those users spend their days, what keeps them up at night, what they think about, who they spend their time with, how they spend their time online, what they purchase, and why they interact with the client’s product.

Every project I work on involves some measure of user research, whether I work on my own or with an official research team. Sometimes I observe users as they use products. Other times I set up tree tests to see how users react to my terminology and nomenclature. When it’s all over, I work with the client to establish a message they want to communicate. I compile the final information into a report or guidelines to serve as a reminder of that message, and we go through the new screens or pages and decide how to communicate the message.

Eventually, my personas, research reports and guidelines are passed on to copywriters. But many copywriters aren’t working with content strategists and therefore don’t have access to that information. More to the point, I don’t create those reports or guidelines with the copywriter in mind. And yet, the copywriter is the person who is having a conversation with the user. Shouldn’t the copywriter have direct access to information about the user they are conversing with? Moreover, shouldn’t the copywriter have opportunities to hear how the user speaks, the sorts of questions they ask, and the vocabulary they use?

(The answer is yes.)

User Research: 

User research is a key stage in the UX design process, and it takes many forms. Christopher Rohrer, writing for the Nielsen Norman Group, explains user research styles as encompassing some combination of four elements:

• Behavioral research, which observes what people do.
• Attitudinal research, which observes what people say.

Qualitative research, which analyzes why people do things, and how to improve those things.

Quantitative research, which analyzes data relating to measurable elements, such as how many prospects convert to customers, or how much of a product a company sells.This map of user research methods comes from Christian Rohrer and the Nielsen Norman Group. (Image credit: Christian Rohrer) (View large version) From user research we get reports with detailed information on users — the people we are creating a website or a product for. Designers, content strategists and developers employ user research results to improve their designs, their guidelines and prototypes. 

User Research For Copywriters

User research is a great tool for copywriters because it can help them to better understand how users speak, and what they want or need. Let’s review some popular forms of research, and look at how they might influence content creation and benefit copywriters. 

Types

Ethnographic Field Studies

What makes an ethnographic field study unique is that it takes place in the user’s home or office. The goal is to see users in their natural environments, as though the researcher was going on safari, hoping for a glimpse of customers in the wild. For a UX designer or a content strategist, ethnographic field studies provide valuable context to understand users’ distractions, as well as their daily influences and familiar interfaces. 

For a copywriter, this sort of study is also an opportunity to see what users read, where they go online and what vocabulary they are encountering. For example, a copywriter might interview a lawyer and listen for legal terminology the lawyer uses in daily conversation, and when talking about how they spends their day. The copywriter would then be able to use that same vocabulary in the headings of a website designed for lawyers. Such studies are particularly useful for:

• Brand redesigns where stakeholders are asking for a (nondescript) “friendlier tone.”
• Situations where the target audience is from a dramatically different culture than the copywriter.

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Diary Studies

A diary study is intended for participants to share how they use the product or service without feeling self-conscious or inhibited. Because of the private nature of a diary, it’s often used for products or services that are personal, or touch on sensitive topics, such as a device to aid people suffering from a disease, or personal hygiene equipment. The diary is less intimidating than a human being, and it can also help researchers identify patterns over the course of days and weeks.

For copywriters, there is a not-so-hidden benefit to diary studies: they serve as a literal sample of how the target audience writes, which can provide tremendous insight into the type of writing they will respond to. A writer who doesn’t write with contractions may feel that a more formal style of website writing feels familiar, whereas a writer who uses little punctuation and no capitalization will feel more comfortable with a website that is more casual. Diary studies are particularly useful for:

Audiences using a technically complex product or service, and equally technical terminology.

Projects where the audience uses a drastically different tone of voice than the company using the process.

Customer Feedback

It’s rare that a copywriter is given a budget to conduct their own research, but customer feedback relies on information that has already been collected. This makes it a perfect data mine for copywriters. Often an organization has a customer support department or customer retention department, collecting everything from phone calls to surveys from frustrated, angry and irate customers. But one man’s hate mail is another’s love letter, and in this case angry customer calls serve as a plethora of evidence as to how customers speak, what they say and when they say it.

As an added benefit, customer feedback tells copywriters what unanswered questions their target audience wishes they could find information on, which is incredibly helpful when choosing content priorities. For example, if the copywriter sees that several customers call asking how to get their product rebates, the copywriter will know to make that information especially easy to find on the website. However, it’s important to verify that the customers providing feedback are actually the people you’ll be writing for. If you’re writing copy for prospective users, for example, feedback from longtime customers will not provide representative information.

 Customer feedback is particularly useful for:

• Companies with a large volume of content to share on their sites.
• Projects where the client or team is uncertain about audience priorities.
• Projects where users are longtime customers.
• Organizations with a poor reputation, or a large contingent of unhappy clients or customers.

Interviews

User interviews are generally agreed to be the best possible source of user information for UX designers. It stands to reason that copywriters are just as eager to learn about users’ needs, wants, fears and preferences! The copywriter’s goal is to build up a natural, familiar conversation with perfect strangers. What better way to create a sense of camaraderie than to learn about the audience?

Although it’s unlikely that a copywriter will be given a budget with which to interview users, if the team is already conducting interviews then it’s smart for the copywriter to sit in or listen to them later. This is a situation where notes on the major takeaways will not serve as an adequate replacement. Pulling out significant clips and phrases, however, is a great way to give copywriters a taste of the interview while respecting their time limitations.

For example, on a complex project where the user researcher is already intending to report back on the interviews, they might include verbatim quotes from five of the participants for the copywriter to see. Interview are particularly useful for:

• Projects with a user research team already conducting interviews for other purposes.
• Situations where the final site needs to come across as conversational.
• Teams trying to identify what messages to communicate to their target audience.

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Focus Groups

Many user experience teams avoid focus groups, and with good reason. Focus groups are a terrible way to learn what multiple users think. The problem with focus groups is twofold: first, people are influenced by their peers; and second, quieter or less influential voices are often overshadowed by stronger (or just plain louder!) team members. None of this concerns a copywriter.

For a copywriter, a focus group is still an excellent way to hear how multiple users speak. For example, if I had been able to meet with several people from our target audience before writing a press release, I might have asked them to help me compile a list of every possible reason press releases are valuable. Since the task is to encourage as many voices and as many answers as possible, it’s less likely that the more confident voices will be the only ones to respond. Focus groups are particularly useful for:

• Projects with very public goals (such as writing press releases or newsletters).
• Target audiences who already know one another or work well together.

Participatory Design

The gap between users and designers is growing ever smaller. One method to draw them still closer together is participatory design, where users join designers for a day of brainstorming, sketching and even prototyping. Although designers ultimately take the product to the next step (in order to make final decisions that consider best practices and accessibility), participatory design helps users to be heard.

Several members of the design team often attend participatory design workshops. A copywriter should invariably be one of them. The copywriter should take notes throughout the workshop, to observe how users interact with the prototype and note the questions they ask and “must haves” they mention. For the copywriter, a participatory workshop is nearly as useful as an interview with users; people typically feel relaxed and are likely to act naturally with the product they are designing.

For example, the copywriter might listen for the questions that participants bring up about the product (Is it waterproof? How do I replace the batteries?) and make note of them to add to an FAQ or as part of a product description later. Participatory design is particularly useful for:

• Organizations building a product or application.
• Audiences who have very specific needs and strong opinions.

A  and B Testing

While most of the research recommendations on this list are intended for copywriters to put in place before they begin writing, A/B testing is a great method for improving copy. A/B testing can happen in two ways: moderated and unmoderated testing.

Moderated testing is not unlike a usability test: a researcher will typically meet with users and ask, “Which page do you prefer?” or “Tell me what you see on each page.” Moderated A/B testing can help the copywriter learn more specifically why users are drawn to one version rather than the other. However, unmoderated testing is also valuable. In unmoderated A/B testing, there is no researcher to facilitate the interaction. For example, users might navigate to a URL and be presented with either version of the screen. The team can then look at the analytics and see how many users directed to version A completed their goal, and how many users directed to version B completed theirs.

Whether moderated or unmoderated, A/B testing helps a copywriter refine terminology and wording to better reach the target audience. For example, a copywriter might try two headlines for a new security system. One is reassuring (“We’ll keep your family safe”) and the other is frightening (“Do you know what’s out there?”). A/B testing will show the copywriter which one is more successful. A/B testing is particularly useful for:

Situations where the copywriter has a good sense of what to write, but is undecided between two styles or voices in the copy.Projects with a technical team who can work with the copywriter to set up A/B testing and analytics.Brand redesigns, with new styles for an already defined audience..

Tools For copywriter  Writers

Once research is complete, it’s time to convert that user knowledge into actual writing. Some copywriters work when inspiration strikes; others simply plod through page after page. However, there are a number of tools available to make the process easier and more enjoyable. Because many are adapted from UX and content strategy, they’re intended to convert user research knowledge into copy that resonates with the people you’re writing for.

None of these tools are mandatory. They will each appeal to different types of writers, and you can pick and choose from them to accomplish different sorts of projects.