Creating a style guide (Experian)
Overview
The Experian style guide persona is the “Expedition Coach.” Whether you’re new to finance and credit or an experienced financier, the Expedition Coach is calm, steady, and an expert in their field. They’ll share knowledge in a way that empowers you to learn critical skills for yourself, and will work alongside you to help accomplish important tasks. The Expedition Coach is conversational and accessible, sometimes fun, but not particularly trendy (you won’t find emojis in texts from your Expedition Coach).
My team’s goal was to create a style guide that set expectations for how we talk to our users, establish best practice guidelines for grammar and style conventions, and collect a comprehensive list of which words to use when. The guide needed to align with our legal and compliance rules and trademark restrictions.
My role
Content Strategist at Experian for all things Finance, working collaboratively with other UX Content Strategists and Legal and Compliance representatives.
The guide at a glance
Here’s what the guide looked like at a high level. Next, I’ll dive into a few key sections.
Grammar and mechanics: Capitalization
Always use sentence case capitalization, including in headlines, subheads, CTAs, field labels and dropdown menus. That means only capitalize the first letter of the first word, everywhere.
Never use all caps (like "Sign up FREE” or "save BIG on interest").
When referring to sections of the UI in a sentence (like the names of headings/sections within our product), keep the sentence-style capitalization but put the item in quotation marks to set it off.
Like this:
Select "Membership details" to see your current plan and list of benefits.
You can see a list of transactions from your connected accounts under "Recent transactions."
Special cases for capitalization
Branded proper names, like FICO® Score or BillFixer, are always capitalized, even if they're part of a sentence-case header or CTA.
We also capitalize primary navigation items (Finances, Credit Cards, etc.).
If a colon is followed by a full sentence, capitalize the first letter of the first word after the colon. Do not capitalize the word after the colon if what follows is an incomplete sentence, like a phrase or a list.
Like this:
It's a match: Sign in to see credit cards picked just for you.
Last step: Confirm your account details
The result: more money in your pocket.
Get started with the basics: your Experian credit report, your FICO® Score and a free privacy scan.
Grammar and mechanics: Sentence structure
Use the active voice, and address the consumer directly with commands whenever possible. Active voice also helps you write shorter, punchier sentences.
Like this:
See how much you could save on auto insurance.
Sign in to view your latest credit report changes.
Not like this:
Your auto insurance payments could be lowered.
Your latest credit report changes can be found in your account.
Fragments
Feel free to use sentence fragments if appropriate. You can also start sentences with "And" or "But" to sound more conversational.
Subjects
Default to second person (“you” vs. “me” or "I"), unless another tense is necessary for the context.
Don't refer to customers in third person by calling them "users."
Like this:
With Experian Boost®, you can use bills you already pay to raise your FICO® Scores.
Not like this:
With Experian Boost®, users can use bills they already pay to raise their FICO® Scores.
Only use first person if the context requires the customer to speak for themselves. This comes up infrequently, but here are a couple examples—mostly where the customer is addressed directly:
SMS verification that asks "How do you want to receive your code?" with options to "Text me" or "Call me"
Legal terms & conditions that require the user to check an "I agree" type of acknowledgment
FAQ that would sound nonsensical in second person (e.g., "What if my bank isn't listed?")
Tenses
Prioritize using simple tenses—past, present, future.
If your sentence includes had/has/have, be/being/been or gerunds (verbs ending in -ing), those are signals to check your tense for opportunities to simplify.
Like this:
That account was closed, so we couldn't connect it to Experian Boost.
You did it! You earned the Trailblazer achievement badge.
Not like this:
That account has been closed, so we couldn't connect it to Experian Boost.
You've done it! You've earned the Trailblazer achievement badge.
Other principles for digestible sentences
1. Keep it simple
Instead of stringing together multiple independent clauses with ", and" or an em-dash, try breaking them up.
Like this:
You're on a roll. Check out these tips to keep the momentum going.
A higher credit score means more options. Think better offers and lower interest rates.
Increase your FICO Score instantly. Yep, you read that right.
Not like this:
You're on a roll—so check out these tips to keep the momentum going.
A higher credit score means more options, like for starters, you can get access to better offers and lower interest rates.
Increase your FICO Score instantly (yep, you read that right).
2. Say what, then how
Word order matters. Front-load important information as much as you can, especially if you're talking about a benefit for the customer. Don't save it for the end of the sentence—you might lose their interest by then.
Like this:
Customers save $200 per year on average by switching insurance carriers.
Instantly raise your FICO Score with Experian Boost®.
Not like this:
After switching insurance carriers, customers save an average of $200 per year.
Try Experian Boost® to raise your FICO Score instantly.
3. Write sequentially
When describing actions that should be taken in a particular order, list them sequentially. This helps the reader follow along.
Like this:
Go to Reports & Scores, then select Credit Reports to view your full credit report.
Not like this:
Select Credit Reports under Reports & Scores to view your full credit report.
Appendix: Error messages
What makes a good error message?
Be specific. Offer as much (customer-friendly) info as you can about what happened.
Offer a path forward. Tell the customer what they can do next or in the meantime. If you can provide an example of what they should do, even better. For instance, "Enter your email in the format name@example.com" is much more helpful than "That's not a valid email address."
Only use "sorry" when it's our fault. In general, a "we're working on it" type of message is better than a "sorry." Use "sorry" sparingly, and only when we've done something that directly caused customers to experience a problem using our products.
Use active voice and commands if it's an error the user can fix. When possible, describe what the user should do to resolve the error—not the conditions of the input itself. For instance, opt for "Choose a date no more than 1 year from now" rather than "The date must be no more than 1 year from now.”
Product-specific guidelines: Experian Billfixer™
A benefit of the new premium membership, Experian BillFixer™ lets customers ask Experian to negotiate lower prices on their current bills (cell phone, internet, cable, and more). The customer uploads a PDF/image of their monthly bill and submits it for negotiation via their account. Then Experian will contact the service provider on the customer's behalf to negotiate a better deal.
Once the negotiation is complete, the customer will get an email announcing their monthly or annual savings (or, in some cases, letting them know we weren't able to lower their price). The customer keeps 100% of the money they save, and Experian states that any new contract we negotiated will retain the features of the customer's current plan. BillFixer also allows users to opt into automatic renegotiation when the terms of their current rate are up, so they continue to save on an ongoing basis.
Messaging strategy
The most important value prop of BillFixer is that it can save customers money and time without them having to do anything. This sometimes means including more references to ourselves in copy than we normally would—like "we" or "our team" or "our experts". This does help get across that Experian is doing the legwork and we're going beyond what a user might be able to negotiate for themselves.
Relatedly, it can be helpful to underscore our expertise by mentioning the volume of bills that we've been able to lower for customers. We've completed 40,000+ negotiations so far, and find savings on over 80% of bills.
If we save the customer money on their bill, it's a celebratory moment! We congratulate them and emphasize the savings they received. And if we couldn't negotiate a better deal—we can message this positively too, since the customer got confirmation that they're already getting their lowest possible price.
The average BillFixer customer is estimated to save $263—and we can use that number in our messaging as long as it's accompanied by the relevant disclosure. Express the average savings per customer as a potential and an average, like this:
You could save $263* on average with Experian BillFixer when you upgrade to a premium membership. Just upload your bills and we’ll negotiate your best price—it’s that easy.
Terminology
We like to mention the negotiable bill types—the most common are cable, internet, cell phone in that order. This reflects the frequency of successful negotiations (in other words, cable bills are the category where we typically see the most negotiated savings).
To further distinguish negotiable bills from others (like medical bills or insurance), we like to clarify that BillFixer is for monthly or everyday bills
Avoid referring to the lower "rate" a user gets on a bill, as numerous other financial concepts also have "rates" that they view or change with Experian—for instance, insurance rates or interest rates. Instead, some good phrases to use are lower your bills, lower this bill, lower your costs, lower price, etc.
Approved language
Use the full product name Experian BillFixer™ on first mention within a given piece of content. Subsequent mentions can freely use just “BillFixer” as a short form.
Include a ™ in Experian BillFixer™ on first mention of the full name in a headline or subhead, AND on first mention in body text
Do include a ™ on first mention of “BillFixer” alone in the same manner, as it will (most likely!) be trademarked
In pieces of content that only have 1 total mention of the product (like a push notification), default to using the full name Experian BillFixer™
Exceptions/tips for email:
The preference from Compliance is to use the full product name in the subject line
If you use the full name with trademark in the subject line, you can say “BillFixer” alone everywhere else, since that mention in the subject line counts as first mention
However, for character limitations, it’s OK to omit the ™ after the product name in a subject line – if you do so, you’ll just need to include the full name + trademark symbol within the email itself instead
If you have a strong case to use the short form in the subject line, you must ensure that the full name with trademark symbol appears prominently within the email (such as in the first paragraph of copy above the CTA)
If the product is mentioned multiple times within the body of an email, it's OK to first use “BillFixer” in the spots that are character-limited (like the headline or CTA), as long as the full name with trademark symbol appears prominently as well.
Conclusions
This is only a small section of our style guide, but it represents our overall tone of voice.
Consistency is critical to the user experience—by establishing expectations for how we talk to users, when we say what, and how we present each product, it reduces the mental load required to navigate our product.
Our style guide is also an important internal resource. When questions arise from our design, product and legal stakeholders, we have a clear point of reference to justify our decisions.
What’s next?
As our product continues to evolve, we will too. I expect our voice to get “younger” and less serious to appeal to the changing needs of people using tech. We’ll continue to avoid technical jargon and emojis, but our Expedition Coach may become a little more friendly, particularly as we expand our product offerings.