LastPass (2020 – Current)
LastPass is one of the world's most trusted password management solutions. From students to enterprise businesses, LastPass makes it easy for users to secure, manage, and access their passwords from anywhere.
I started as a contracted copywriter at LastPass in December 2020. After developing and improving content for several larger projects, LastPass hired me as a full-time copywriter in April 2021.
Since, I have been the sole UX copywriter and content designer for LastPass's Web and E-commerce team. I have led, collaborated on, and developed content for many projects since starting at LastPass, from campaigns to product launches, brand refreshes to site restructures
It's easier to lose a person's interest than maintain it
Easy-to-navigate and -understand UX is one of the simplest ways to keep a potential customer engaged. Wherever a user enters a site, conversion should feel natural.
With a brand refresh launching in mid-2024, I wanted to get ahead of the curve and simplify the LastPass website. Cohesion was my priority. By streamlining via templatization, I could simplify many aspects of our website to:
- Make the site easier to navigate
- Differentiate subpages more clearly
- Create visual and narrative structures that were easy to understand
- Ease the workload on writers, designers, and publishers w/r/t new pages
- Decommission older pages and condense the site
- Differentiate subpages more clearly
- Create visual and narrative structures that were easy to understand
- Ease the workload on writers, designers, and publishers w/r/t new pages
- Decommission older pages and condense the site
I started the work on my own, creating content designs for our primary pages and subpages, thinking about how we could reduce repetition, improve crosslinking, and drive conversions.
My designer and I then built out the pages and began work on user testing, where we could get real-world feedback from existing and potential customers.
After several rounds of research and updating our page designs to meet the coming brand refresh, the site templatization communicated with other teams and published to the site.
The site templatization improved the UX of our site and eased the writing, design, and publishing process.
For instance, in the Summer of 2024, I was tasked with writing and revising 40+ net-new and existing webpages in three months. This was a monumental task, but it was feasible because of the efficiency produced by my templatization project.
Consistency matters
Speaking of templatization, another significant, ongoing project my designer and I have worked on is the maintenance of Web Components and Web Guidelines Figma files.
These are the sources of truth for our website. The image on the left is just one example from the Web Components file: the standardized versions of all our page-end callouts.
Other components and guidelines documented include:
Web Components:
- Article structure
- Standardized callout cards
- Standardized resource cards
- Feature stack construction
- Heroes and footers
- Standardized callout cards
- Standardized resource cards
- Feature stack construction
- Heroes and footers
Web Guidelines (for all components listed above – and more):
- Usage
- Color and theme
- Placement
- Maximum character length for all written attributes
- Best practices for use (Do's and Don'ts)
- Color and theme
- Placement
- Maximum character length for all written attributes
- Best practices for use (Do's and Don'ts)
As a cybersecurity company, consistency matters, because inconsistency causes a lack of confidence. Clear guidelines keep me and my coworkers dependable while allowing us to communicate what is and isn't feasible on the website at any given time.
Intuitive navigation = a streamlined experience
The above work – site templatization and standardized components – was implemented across the site, in accordance with a brand refresh, to give the LastPass.com site a more cohesive, natural feel.
The site will continue to undergo changes, such as SEO optimizations in response to UserTesting results and updated customer profiles. But no matter the content adjustments, the new site structure will make it easier for users to engage with the LastPass site.
Below are some examples of site facelifts, from the site's homepage to the Families product page, a new all solutions page to the save & autofill feature page.
Best practices and standardized writing
Due to being the sole web writer for LastPass, I work with a variety of cross-org teams: SEO, product marketing, brand & creative, demand generation, legal, sales, etc.
With any given project, there's always some matter of give and take: every team has their own goals; there are specific results they need to see for a project to be successful. For that reason, there's always a variety of opinions about what writing should look like.
To simplify this common back-and-forth process when working with other teams, I created a number of internal documents which explained how to write for the LastPass.com website.
These best practices guidelines explain why certain decisions are made when writing for the web, especially in instances where a decision may clash with another team. The guidelines are never intended as a means of saying another team is wrong for having their needs; rather, it's a means of coming to a resolution, showing how something could be rewritten to meet their goals while still maintaining best practices for site UX purposes.
In some cases, the best practices are inflexible, such as capitalization, punctuation, and other mechanics – consistency is important when it comes to user trust. In other areas, a common ground could be found while rationalizing writing decisions made. For instance, copy for a brand campaign could be rewritten to present the story in a more digestible, conversion-focused way.
Additionally, I developed a series of hand-off documents which could be used by myself and teams I was collaborating with. For me, these were standardized documents I'd use to deliver content to another team – a file that clearly laid out content structure, component choices, and more.
For the other teams, I provided them with documents they could fill out when requesting content. This would make collaboration easier and faster, as I'd be able to get more information from them at the start, which would assist when developing content.
Creating a story in reverse
Near the end of 2024, LastPass launched a brand campaign featuring a character colloquially known as Mr. Note-It-All. The campaign featured six 30-second videos which presented the comedic mishaps that tend to emerge from password (mis)management.
I was tasked with developing a standalone brand hub for the LastPass website which would feature all the videos. Additionally, I had to create this office space: while the videos were filmed, we knew nothing about the characters, where they worked, their dynamics, etc.
The timeline for this was short, so I needed to work at a fast pace.
Due to my web UX experience, I first created a wireframe for the standalone page. I drafted this wireframe in Figma based on best practices for design and the web components available for use. To the latter, I wanted to ensure this project could be completed and published ASAP, per the given timeline; using pre-built components would guarantee this project was feasible.
Next, I began the speculative writing process, creating an idea of what this company was, who these characters were, what the characters relationships were with one another. This work would bring life to the campaign, making it feel more personable and like a sitcom. Additionally, it could assist the brand team in drafting future adverts (which were planned).
By creating a realistic workspace, isolated videos could be transformed into a larger story, where each character's fed into a narrative of relatable workplace habits, personalities, and mishaps.
This brand campaign is work in progress. In it's current phase, I'm fleshing out the persona of Mr. Note-It-All with plans to further introduce him to the world.