Improve Your Search Box with User-Friendly Microcopy

The search box is front and center on most websites. Make it better for users.

Posted on February 18, 2026 in Blog Posts

Sometimes, small changes can make a big impact.

Consider the search box, which is probably front and center on your library’s website. Is there placeholder text within the search field? What does the button say? Is there help text indicating what the user is searching?

Each of these little blurbs of text is an example of microcopy, a term from the field of user experience (UX). Microcopy includes button labels, tooltips, page titles, short instructions, and error messages. In this column, we’ll zero in on one place where microcopy is critically important: the search box.

Here’s a bad example that we’ll turn into a good example:

A user encountering this on a library website would probably approach this with some degree of certainty about its purpose—it’s a search box that will search something. But what exactly it’s searching and what kind of query the user should put into the box are not clear.

Here’s how to fix this.

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Add a title.

Label the box with short instructions, like Search our catalog. This is a clear indication of the scope of the search box.

Expand the explanation with help text.

What’s inside the catalog? The help text could cover formats, like books, articles, videos, and more. Additionally, the help text could include cues about what the user should type, like title, author, DOI, or subject. The best place for this help text is above the search box, but it could also go in a tooltip. (Just make sure the tooltip is accessible!)

Use placeholder text with caution—or don’t use it at all.

The placeholder is the gray text inside the search box, which has two big problems. It disappears when the user begins typing, and it’s not accessible for screen reader users. For these two reasons, don’t put critical instructions in the placeholder. To keep things simple, usable, and accessible, err on the side of not using it.

Use a conventional label for the button.

“Find it!” is pretty cutesy, but it’s not a common thing to see on a “submit” button. The unconventional microcopy will trigger a split second of uncertainty in your users, which cumulatively adds up to a lot of confusion for a nonessential label. Just use Search instead.

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Let’s see how these changes improve our example search box…

Is it wordier? Yes. But sometimes, you need more words on the page in service of clarity. In this case, clarity is reached when the user understands the purpose of the search box and what they can expect to be able to find.

Test it!

Now you know some rules of thumb to improve a search box. But don’t leave it there—test it with your users! A low-tech way to do this is to print out your search box or homepage draft, set up a table in your library lobby with stickers or other goodies, and ask passing patrons questions like:

• What do you think this search box does?
• What kinds of things do you think you could put in the search box?
• What do you think happens after you click Search?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how clear is this search box’s purpose?

By talking to real patrons, you’ll get valuable feedback that you can use to refine your new search box.

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Further reading

If you’re hooked on how microcopy can shape the user’s experience, I highly recommend Writing is Designing by Michael J. Metts & Andy Welfle, Rosenfeld Media (2020). It’s full of great advice and useful examples.

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