About

This guide provides rules and guidelines for creating copy for SAP Concur’s User Interface (UI). It covers our personality (voice) and guidance for when and how to talk to our users.

Our goal every day is to help our users get down to business. They use SAP Concur for one reason: complete a task, and time is the most important gift we can give our customers. This means our voice should be clear, simple, human, and used to guide our users to complete their task and focus on the important things in life.

The Short Version

If you read no further, here’s the TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read):

When speaking to our users, our Voice is to be clear, simple, human, and guiding.

  • Users don’t want to use software, they want to complete a task and move on
  • Speak to our users as naturally as possible
  • Consider yourself at a business lunch with a colleague – how would you speak to them?

Let us get started.

OK, that sounded weird, right? That’s the point. Read on!

How to Write Good Copy

What is Copy?

Copy is our verbal voice put into writing.

Copy is typically broken down into two types: microcopy and marketing copy.

Microcopy: It’s all the text that makes up our UI. You’ll find it in our navigation, page titles, labels, and all the informational and instructional text in our product. Its purpose is to help users navigate our products and complete their task.

Marketing Copy: Text that serves more to motivate, engage, and educate users. You’ll find this mostly in our marketing materials and it’s the voice of www.concur.com.

Good Copy Guidelines

  1. Be Human
    • We are creating software for people. Our interface shouldn’t contain "computer language" or product jargon.
  2. Be Conversational
    • Our spoken language and written language don’t usually match
    • Readability is more important than proper grammar
    • Imagine a conversation with our users and how you would naturally talk to them
    • Read your copy out loud to check it
  3. Shorter is Better but Clear is Best!
    • Comprehension and recall drop off after about eight words… so keep it short and simple.
  4. Write for the User
    • Don’t let our internal language or jargon creep into our UI
    • Ask yourself what your User would think about your copy
    • Understand and empathize with your Use: Where did they come from? What do we need to tell them?