Tone of voice - Redhouse Lane Communications

Transport for London: Tone of voice

How Transport for London made themselves plain to customers

Challenge

Transport for London’s website, TfL.org.uk, gets more than seven million hits a month, and won the Webby People’s Voice Award for best government website in 2008. It was clearly doing something right.

But the site lacked a consistent tone of voice, and the impersonal, sometimes bureaucratic language undermined TfL’s customer-focused values.

Our response

We reviewed a sample of pages from the site, considering everything from broken links to whether information could be better presented. This identified the main issues and how best to fix them.

Our solution included:

a tone of voice workshop to help TfL editors and information architects agree how TfL should sound online
tone of voice and editorial style guides, and a content workflow document – essentials for good website governance
a thorough audit of the site by six web editors, who restructured, merged and deleted content to improve navigation
another editor embedded in TfL, looking after everyday site maintenance.

We gave presentations and one-on-one guidance where necessary to get support from key stakeholders and content owners.

Result

The Plain English Campaign awarded the Business & Partners area of the site the Crystal Mark standard. Only about one in ten websites hit the Mark the first time they’re submitted.

The Mark now acts both as the site’s quality benchmark, and as a symbol of TfL’s commitment to clear communicating with customers.