Plain English Awards

celebrate New Zealand's clearest communicators

Winner: Best Plain English Website — Private 2018

Xero

Judge Rachael Fogarty, third from left, and the winning team from Xero. Photo by Rebecca McMillan Photography.

Website name

central.xero.com


Judges’ comments

This is an excellent website that delivers a high level of service to users. [It] is an excellent example of a website that uses plain writing and information design to achieve a demonstrable business benefit.

The target audience will be able to find answers to their questions intuitively. They’ll be able to resolve their questions and confidently put into practice the solutions that the website documents.


Media statement

At Xero, one of our core values is around being human and this resonates through everything we do. We live online and we need our writing to be authentic. It is particularly relevant in the way we communicate and share information with our customers , which is why we are delighted to have been awarded the Best Plain English Website award.

A huge congratulations must go to our team of writers who worked on the content during our two year journey. This involved assessing existing customer content, devising a new content strategy, and updating or rewriting content using plain English.

It’s not always easy to explain accounting principles and some of the innovative Xero features, but the team was focused on producing content which was easy to find and understand, regardless of the reader’s accounting and business experience. We have produced more than 4,000 articles which have a consistent, easy to understand feel to them and we are delighted to be recognised for our work.

Daniel Fell

Content Manager