MicroCopy Magic. Those Little Words Under Your Shopify Buttons That Make All The Difference

0:00OmniSend just shipped something that I've always wanted. You can now connect OmniSend to ChatGPT or Claude and just say, where can my email and SMS campaigns be making more money? And it actually figures it out. It reads your store data, all your campaign details, your store history, and it tells you and the insights are legit good. And even better, you can then say, okay, let's fix that or build that campaign. And it actually does it right from your chat. It's wild. Now, if you're one of our listeners, you can get 30 % off for three months on OmniSend. Just go to the show notes. There's a link there.

0:31Or you can just use the code J30, J-A-Y-3-0 when you sign up. Now, if you're using another email and SMS platform and you want to switch to OmniSend, which is a great idea, they will do the migration for you. Just give them five days and then you show up with everything set, ready to go. Now, they've migrated thousands of stores from Klaviyo. And on average, they're saving 35 % on their email and SMS bills. If you're listening to this show, you clearly care about your Shopify business. If your store isn't backed up and protected, it could all be for nothing. That's why I tell every store owner I know who cares about their business, you 100 % need Rewind installed.

1:07It's a non-negotiable for me. One bad CSV import, one app that edits your store the wrong way, which has happened to basically everyone I know. One bulk edit gone wrong, and now AI making changes for you. Listen, Shopify does not have an undo button. Rewind is the undo button. Go to shopify1percent.com slash rewind for 30 days free on us. Links in the show notes too. Hey friends, today I'd like to talk to you about six words that are killing a lot of your revenue. And these are words that sit directly underneath your buttons. They look harmless and you might think people just skim right past them.

1:53They sound normal, but they're costing you money every single day. And actually, here's a stat that should wake a lot of people up. 39 % of shoppers abandon checkout because they feel costs, shipping costs and extra costs are too high. And then there's another 14 % that abandon because they don't see the total cost up front. So when your site says shipping calculated at checkout, what you're actually doing is you're literally training the buyer to expect a surprise. And so today I wanted to do an episode all about microcopy. It's that tiny helper text underneath buttons in carts at checkout underneath fields within labels, placeholder text, all the microcopy that isn't the main headings and main titles on your site.

2:43The small words that really keep the sale moving along. So microcopy is not copywriting. I want to say that first of all. Microcopy is a few things. It's friction removal. It's uncertainty reduction, I want to say. It's momentum protection, keeping the momentum going. And microcopy really shows up in a few critical spots and moments in the buyer journey. It shows up when the buyer is about to click. It shows up when the buyer is about to pay. It shows up when the buyer hits a snag or an error, those error messages. It shows up if the buyer is maybe hesitating, comparing or second guessing. And it shows up when the buyer is thinking like, what if this goes wrong?

3:31And they have a question. And if your micro copy and get tongue twisted on this word micro copies, if I say it so many times in this episode. But if your micro copy doesn't answer a fear, it actually creates one. So it does one of the two. Don't think of it as neutral. If it's vague and the customer will fill in the blanks for you. The blanks will get filled in in their own head. You have to answer those questions. And customers don't usually fill in blanks in your favor. They'll fill it in with worry or fear. So the goal is simple. Make the next step feel safe and obvious. And here's where most people get it wrong.

4:08So I got a few mistakes I want to list here. And some of you might fall into this. And that's OK. But I wrote down mistake number one. they leave the default uncertainty everywhere. And so this is the classic shipping calculated at checkout. And that's like default. And what that really means to a customer is cool. You're hiding the total and it causes uncertainty or another mistake. They write microcopy like a brochure, premium quality, fast shipping, best in class. That's not microcopy. That's wishful thinking and it doesn't do anything to help the momentum of that buyer's journey. Mistake number three, they stack reassurances like some type of a legal disclaimer.

4:53So secure checkout, easy return, satisfaction guarantee, ships fast, loved by thousands, trusted by millions. Like that line just becomes wallpaper and nobody, no one believes wallpaper. It's just noise. Mistake number four, they use AI and it sounds like AI. and I think you can all kind of tell when something is AI and you know the voice experience unparalleled excellence curated selection or whatever just all these AI isms I call it just stop it like that is not a store that is a robot trying to pass some type of Turing test it's not it's not you it's not your brand it's not who you are mistake number five they put microcopy in the wrong place they They maybe bury it in an FAQ, which is like sometimes in FAQs, there's great microcopy that should be right underneath a button or right by a field or just microcopy underneath a header or they hide it in like some shipping policy link.

5:51Microcopy has to be in the moment. So not deep in an FAQ in the exact moment where the customer has the question and it might cause friction and it might slow momentum. That's where it needs to be exposed. So I want to talk about what some of the best stores are doing now. So those are some of the mistakes. Here's what some of the best stores are doing. The best stores treat microcopy like a performance lever. And they see it as something that increases and maximizes conversion. And they do a few things very different. So first, they get very specific. So I want you to think about this. I wrote specific beats persuasive.

6:33and specific feels true. So the more specific you can make a statement, the better. So instead of saying fast shipping, say ships within 24 hours, instead of saying easy returns, say 30 day returns, free exchanges, like very specific. The second thing stores that are doing this well do is they use what I call operational truth, which means they don't promise what operations cannot deliver. They promise what operations consistently delivers. And that makes microcopy feel human, not hacky. So, okay. So an example of this is we pack orders nine to 4 PM central time after 4 PM ships tomorrow. Like that's just a statement.

7:22It's not a sales or marketing statement, but it's reassuring. It's human. It's not hacky. It's a statement. We pack orders nine to four central time after 4pm ships tomorrow. It's not hype. It's just real. And that's what customers want. It answers their question. They get it. It's clear. It's probably going to reduce support tickets and it will increase conversion. The third thing they wrote is they always place it at the point of commitment. And so right underneath a primary call to action inside a cart drawer, like where you're clicking to go through to checkout inside a checkout somewhere near payment anywhere where there's a call to action or a decision this is usually where doubt creeps in and this is where microcopy done well will print you money so just to give a bit of evidence i always like to look up stats and some evidence to support things so here's a few real world examples and i'm going to start with a bit of a macro examples, but most checkout experiences right now, they're still not great.

8:27In fact, Baymard's benchmarking, they found that a huge portion of sites score mediocre, actually, or worse for checkout user experience. And they called out that actually 70%, most of you probably have heard this stat, but it's still mind blowing when you think about it, even though we're numb to it, 70 % of people who enter a checkout will abandon it. So we're not fighting little tiny leaks here, We're fighting a giant gaping hole in your checkout. And here's why it matters so much for microcopy. When we look at the abandonment reasons from that same Baymard study, 39 % of them were for extra costs.

9:07They said there was extra costs, unexpected costs when they entered checkout. So that could probably be addressed with some good microcopy. 21 % said delivery was too slow. whatever the shipping option or they maybe they just assumed again if you don't say it if you just say ground delivery or if you just have shipping they might just assume it's too slow if you say three days or you say the day it's coming that might have solved the problem because again they're going to assume something that's not in your favor 19 % of people abandoned because of trust concerns micro copy can definitely help out here 15 % say it was related to returns not being satisfactory for some reason, whether it wasn't up front, they didn't understand it, they weren't sure about it.

9:53But 15 % were due to returns. Again, something microcopy can help with. Every single one of these can actually be reduced with microcopy. It's not going to be completely solved, but they can be reduced. Okay, so now let's talk about Shopify specifically. Shopify actually has hard data on checkout conversion. In Shopify, they had a write-up recently they cited they did an independent study and they say that Shopify outpaces competition by up to 36 percent and an averages conversion of about 15 percent which they also say shop pay can lift conversion by as much as 50 percent versus guest checkout and even the presence of shop pay being on the screen they say can lower conversion can lower funnel conversion by five percent.

10:41Now, that's not copy. That's friction removal at the moment of payment. Now, real world microcopy examples from Shopify's enterprise team is these are the kinds of placements we want. So I'm going to give you a few examples here that I think do it really well. Steve Madden, they use microcopy under their add to cart buttons and say, join the loyalty program, get 20 % off free shipping over$50. And what it does is it answers, is there a deal? And what about shipping? So like, that's always something people wonder when they're adding something to the cart is what is the free shipping threshold? Is there a loyalty program?

11:21Do I get a discount if I buy so many? So don't make them go click around to a couple pages, and then just abandon answer it right there, right at the moment that the buyer is deciding. color pop uh this is another brand they sell lipstick they do a good job they clarify their promo term promo terms with really tight tight micro copy block they say prices as marked limited time or while supplies last cannot be combined it's not like sexy but it's clear they get fewer angry emails they get better conversion it's a better shopping experience they get fewer abandoned carts from confusion. It's good microcopy.

12:02You can go look at their site, see some examples there. A third one I wrote down here was Boem. They actually combine a free shipping progress bar with returns reassurance. And they literally speak that indecision. So they speak to it, the indecision, and then they remove it. So the indecision about how, like, will I be able to return this and how much do I have to spend to get free shipping? So it's just microcopy doing its job to check out their site as well. I'll put these links in the show notes. So, I mean, it's very clear that microcopy is important and uncertainty will kill conversion. So now let's move into the part what you can do to implement some strategy strategies here in your store.

12:47So I'm going to give you a few kind of step-by-step ideas that you can do to your Shopify store today to improve your microcopy. So I want to try to do it in a way that's easy and measurable and not a whole brand brainstorming exercise, just small microcopy tweaks. So kind of step one, let's run a microcopy audit on your store. Pick 10 of your most prominent locations. So open your store and click your, obviously your PDP, your product pages under your buy now or your shop pay buttons. What does that look like? Like just I'm going to list. I have 10 listed here. I'm going to just list them. You can write these down or you can listen to this later.

13:31But these are 10 areas that I want you to go and look at. So your product page immediately under your buy now and shop pay buttons immediately near the price, especially if it's you have subscriptions or bundles or tiers, your shipping line and your delivery promise and your threshold messaging. What do you have there? reassurance messaging near the call to action and in the cart reassurance of anything related to returns or warranties your cart drawer what's in your cart drawer give that an audit especially down near the checkout button your discount code field and this is a confusion disaster for so many stores especially how error messages and are confused people enter it and it doesn't it just says invalid it doesn't say this is a one-time use coupon or whatever your checkout delivery step your error states and your post-purchase confirmation page too with like tracking expectations and shipping actually i was reading a really interesting thing the other day the domino pizza pizza tracker i'm sure if anyone's ever ordered pizza from domino's pizza they've got this pizza tracker as soon as you order it you kind of it says like preparing your order making your order in the oven cooking something like that getting boxed up and it's this progress bar that shows all the steps of your pizza being made and someone said once that they said that when they built that it's actually has it's not connected to the pizza store at all there is not like someone who is making your pizza and as they put the ingredients on it they hit a button that say the ingredients are on ding now it's going in the oven ding all that is is a timer it is just a timer.

15:11But if they would have had a 30 minute timer, that was just 30 minutes going down, people don't trust it. And apparently that pizza tracker reduced customer call questions and support requests by it was some crazy amount, like 80 % less, just because they had the details on this pizza tracker. So anything you can do that on your confirmation page, expect in the next 24 hours, we will be packaging it up, it should ship within 24 shipping confirmation on this day, like everything that they can expect. And just, you know, remember your goals not to write a whole bunch and confuse just remove one or two top doubts and answer one or two questions on each of these pages.

16:01So step number one, run that micro copy audit. Step number two, I want you to think of this concept of called the three job rule and every microcopy line should do one job it should do one of these three things so I'm going to give you the three jobs and it has to do one of these three it has to either reduce uncertainty it has to either set an expectation or explain a decision okay so those are the three things that every microcopy line should do reduce uncertainty set an expectation or explain a decision if it doesn't do one of those three things if it just says like those bad examples that i gave earlier then it's not good so if it does too many of those so actually if it does multiple split it out put it into two different statements or put it somewhere else and if it's just hype like fresh premium quality so yeah premium quality does not reduce uncertainty i mean you could argue it does but it doesn't.

17:04It's just noise. It's the wallpaper. If it's just hype, rewrite it, rewrite it. It has to fit into one of those three. Okay. Step three, what I want you to do is I want you to fix your highest ROI line first. So your highest area of return on investment. And I can tell you, this is probably almost going to always be under your primary CTA on your product page or your call to action, which is your add to cart button. So this is the most important place. So you could kind of use this template if you want. Outcome plus time plus risk reversal. So those are the examples of, so think of this, this is how you want to structure it.

17:45Outcome plus time plus risk reversal. So here's a couple examples. Ships in 24 hours, 30 day returns. Outcome plus time plus risk reversal. Here's another one. free exchanges, easy returns within 30 days. I'm going to give you two more in stock today, delivery estimate at checkout. Pay with four easy shop pay installments. So pick one, don't use them all, but pick one that is most relevant for you or write your own. Okay, step four is make your microcopy a content system, not a theme edit. And this is really important to make it easy, because if it's something that lives inside your theme code, you're not going to maintain it, you're not going to update it, your marketing team isn't going to know how to do it, if you need a developer to change your microcopy.

18:40So we like to make it editable. And here's a practical approach for Shopify. So you can use theme blocks for microcopy sections. So always store microcopy in meta fields or meta objects and then attach them to products collections or global settings and then you can change that microcopy without touching code and some themes do this really well if you're working with a developer who's building out your store ask them to make sure that all the microcopy is in theme blocks so you can edit them and you don't have to ask them to edit every single time you want to change your microcopy and this matters because microcopy should evolve and it should change.

19:22It might be seasonal. In fact, seasonality is really important. Like imagine you have a add to cart button and it says guaranteed delivery December 14th, like ships delivered before Christmas. Like that's a huge conversion booster, but you don't want that there after it's not going to be delivered before Christmas in January. So their seasonality matters. So you want to be able to change these, these delivery promises and all this microcopy and inventory changes, promos change. Microcopy should very much be a living thing. Okay, step five, personalize responsibility with Shopify tools. And here's what I mean by this, like, this is where Shopify native becomes a bit of a cheat code.

20:03You can tailor microcopy based on context. So example, so you could make it so a returning customer sees, welcome back your info is saved with shop pay that would feel really good if i am on a product page or if an international customer sees duties and taxes shown before you pay well that would be awesome if all customers from a country that you weren't in just knew how duties and taxes were handled up front or if a cart already qualifies for free shipping because you have enough in it It says you unlock free shipping or cart is$12 away from free shipping. And that shows you can make these micro copies dynamic.

20:47So this is going to get a little bit technical, but you can use Shopify flow to tag customers or use segment logic in Shopify segments. You can automatically segment customers by rules, how much they spend, where they're coming from, what country they're in, what they a lot of different criteria, how many times they've ordered all kinds of stuff. and then your theme can use that tag or segment state to display microcopy. You can do this in checkout and plus merchants can actually go even further with this. So this one's a little bit more advanced, but huge if you can do it to have a dynamic microcopy.

21:21And OK, I got one last one here. I wrote use checkout customization the right way. And what I mean by this is if you're on Shopify Plus, the checkout blocks app is actually built for this. And you can there's a number of ways you can do this. There's a different bunch of checkout apps, but you can add text blocks, banners, custom fields, reorder methods. You can even build dynamic content blocks that have warranty information, trust signs, signals, detail about returns. You put all of that in your checkout and it's huge conversion boosters. This is where micro copy can actually completely prevent a drop off right at this point of payment.

22:02If you're non plus, you can still do some stuff, but focus on your product page, your cart, your cart drawer and your post purchase pages. You just can't do some of the checkout stuff. So I'm sorry, I had one more here. So step seven, this wasn't really a step, but it's the last one I wanted to mention. Test micro copy is actually perfect for A-B testing. Small changes with a bit of a hypothesis and measure the results. You know, those examples I listed earlier of four different examples that you could put on your main button on your product page. Test them all. They're different ones will work differently for different stores.

22:40There isn't a universal microcopy that is best. So test a shipping promise under the call to action and then check our returns reassurance in the cart or on the product page. Test promo terms clearly near discount fields. Just test everything you to do this. You can actually do lightweight experiments right in the theme now with Shopify's A-B testing and then just looking at analytics. If you want, there are tools that also you can do this. IntelliGems is a good one. Shogun has a great A-B tester tool. Actually, that one would be the best one I would recommend that is simple, super cost effective.

23:16I think they have a plan that's like nine dollars a month and you can have A-B test set up in, I want to say like 90 seconds. It's incredibly easy to use. So, you know, measure, measure, measure. And probably what I would track. I mean, there's lots of stuff you can track, but just track add to cart rate, checkout started and overall purchase conversion rate. That's it. Those three things. That's it. Last thing I just want to say is, you know, be authentic. You know, in in 2026, buyers can smell conversion copy instantly. Right. So here's kind of a rule you can follow. micro copy should sound like your operations team, not your marketing team.

23:57It should sound like something your operations team wants to say to your customers, not your marketing team. So keep it human, be specific numbers, you know, beat big, fancy adjectives, use constraints, humans, admit constraints, the humans, humans to say that like shipping in three days or shipping and like constraints are okay, but be human. Use your customer's language from tickets and reviews. If there's certain ways that customers talk about something, use their language, keep it short. One idea per line, the shorter the better, but get the message across. And don't worry about optimizing every sentence.

24:35Some text should just help. So a simple line like, ships in one to two business days from your city. Like it feels human. It's grounded. It's reality. It's who you are. So that's about it. I made a few more notes here, but I just want to say in close. So, you know, here's your challenge for today. Change one micro copy line on your site. Start with one. If you do the one under your add to cart button, replace some uncertainty with clarity. And one of those categories that we talked about shipping some type of a version or some question they have. Measure it for seven days. Watch those three stats, the add to cart, the checkout starts and the conversion.

25:14Track it and then try another one. because honestly, the difference between 1.8 and 2.1 conversion, it's not magic. Like it's simple little things like this. And if thousands of tiny little decisions, which is why we call this the Shopify 1 % show, because every 1 % improvement makes an impact. And microcopy is one of the smallest, but possibly one of the highest leverage impacts you can make. Okay, that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to my rant about microcopy. Hope you learned something. If you got anything from this episode, you can say thank you by leaving a five star review and a comment in Apple Podcasts and iTunes.

25:55That's all I ask. It would mean a ton to me. We are really trying to get exposure for the show. So take two seconds right now. Go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. I know some of you are listening in Audible and Amazon Music, wherever you listen. That'd be great. Just five star review and say thanks for the episode on microcopy. I learned something awesome. Thanks. Thanks so much, everyone. We'll see you on the next episode.