Our voice

We don't talk like a bank. We talk with warmth and empathy—as we would to a friend. 💖

Friends have conversations. Ads yell at passers-by. What’s more, good conversationalists are empathetic and good listeners. We prefer to focus on the customer, not on ourselves. We are not arrogant or product-focused.

Distance yourself

Use a tool like NaturalReader or say what you’ve written out loud. It will help you look at your work with fresh eyes. How does it sound? Would you be ok saying that to a friend’s face in a real conversation?

Other small but meaningful ways to make our content more friendly and conversational:

• Use contractions (because that’s what we do when we message our friends)
• Use first names (unless it’s something like a monthly statement)
• Use pronouns as you would in a natural conversation

We don't talk in a long-winded, confusing way. 😊

We are always very clear on what is the main message we want to deliver. We focus on that and cut out the rest. It’s like using a highlighter marker. If everything is highlighted, nothing is.

3-second impression game

Show your content to someone for no longer than 3 seconds (6 if it's long-form, like a blog). Take it away and ask them what they remember and noticed. Is it what you were trying to communicate? If not, simplify further.

We also keep our content simple by:

• Not using jargon, little-known abbreviations, or acronyms.
• Using terminology consistently—one of the easiest ways to confuse our customers is to have a few names for one thing and use them interchangeably.
• Making our sentences short.
• Rudolf Flesch recommends on average only 18 words per sentence.
• We think we can go even shorter with 14 or fewer words per sentence.
• Gov.uk says: ‘Writing guru Ann Wylie describes research showing that when average sentence length is 14 words, readers understand more than 90% of what they’re reading. At 43 words, comprehension drops to less than 10%.’

Tip: ask mum!

If you are not sure if a word is known and used, ask your mum or a friend who is not in finance. You can also use Google Trends or Keyword Planner to compare traffic for various synonyms. Or, try the British National Corpus word search or Google Ngram Viewer.

Simplicity is an art. We put in a lot of hard work behind the scenes to make sure our content is easy to understand.

We are honest, transparent and we don't overpromise. 😇

We want to compete on trust not just on ‘wow.’ We design our user experiences for trust and long-term customer loyalty.

This is especially relevant when we talk about fees, write terms and conditions, ask for app permissions and describe promotions.

Here are a few simple things we do to make our content more genuine:

• We're kind of conservative when it comes to exclamation marks
• We don’t hide behind asterisks (either the information is important and should be upfront or it is not and we remove it entirely)

We don’t copy others. We don’t want to fit in. We want to stand out—for the right reasons. 😎

Not everything has to be memorable. In fact, a lot of great content is invisible and lets customers focus on the job at hand.

So what's memorable? Surprise can be memorable. So can relevance and hyper-personalisation.

Memorable is very closely linked to product positioning. it’s much harder to say something memorable about a product that is the same as what everyone else offers.

But the most forgettable thing is lukewarm compromise. Content that offends no one, surprises no one, takes no risks and is immediately forgotten by everyone.

Look out for these frequent flyers—common offenders that signal lazy, forgettable writing:

• Anytime, anywhere
• 24/7
• Banking on the go
• Banking in your pocket
• Peace of mind for you and your loved ones
• One-stop shop for all your banking needs
• Banking at your convenience
• Just a tap away
• At your fingertips
• Wherever you go
• Fuss-free and easy to use
• All-in-one app
• So you can focus on what matters most
• Hassle-free
• For all your needs