metro.net Guidelines
NOTE: This is a living document and will evolve as the website develops over time.
General:¶
Think about the ecosystem. Metro.net is rarely the “silver bullet” solution to your business goals. Consider where and how people spend their time these days. We all have a regular communications ecosystem we use to discover, connect and act with the world around us. This ecosystem includes our social media timelines on Facebook and Instagram, search engines like Google, and our favorite websites, apps and channels. To engage our target audiences, it is critical we know where people are, what they need and entice them with the most compelling messages to take the actions we want them to take. We will work with you to build a strategy and tactical plan that addresses the entire communications ecosystem for each audience.
Defined audience. Metro.net is not for Metro, it’s for the people we serve in Los Angeles County. Every section, page, piece of content or call-to-action must have a defined audience. We need to ask “who is this for” and “what problem is this solving.” Keep in mind, “general public” or “everyone” is not a defined audience. As experts in your department, we will work with you to define your audience and help define the problem you are attempting to solve so we are better able to tailor the marketing strategy and design the content, actions and metrics to determine if we are achieving our goals.
Have clearly defined goals. In order to adequately measure and determine how successful a webpage is and make iterative improvements, we need to have business goals that align with Vision 2028 and information the audience needs. Goals should be business goals like increasing riders, building support and increasing attendance. These are different than key performance indicators (KPIs) like page views and time on site. If needed, a Business Assessment form can be provided to help kickoff this process.
Use plain language. Metro’s website is our main touchpoint for the general public and needs to be accessible to people from all walks of life. All content posted to the page needs to be written at a 7th grade reading level or below. This helps us ensure that people from varying backgrounds, education levels and age groups can access and engage with Metro.
Content should be on brand. In addition to being accessible, web copy should follow Metro brand guidelines on tone and voice. Specific guidance can be found at brand.metro.net.
Metro’s website is about our service, projects and programs, not our organizational chart that’s why we have MyMetro. Therefore:
Customer-oriented pages only! The website is for customers and information needs to be presented in terms of its value in their customer journey. On the projects side, if a program, practice area, process or concept needs to be explained to give context for an active project, it can be a ‘how we plan and build’ page and include contact information for an expert on that subject. These pages can also include links to plans and other documents that are relevant to said program, practice area, process or concept. Example template of web content considerations.
Other than the Board members (and maybe top executive management…), no bios and headshots should appear on the website. Calendar items for specific events in the Metro Conversations series or other events that may have guest speakers or panelists may include a short bio as part of the event information.
More strategic ‘web requests’ based on customer needs. Please do not send us copy that has already been finalized for posting verbatim. Unless the copy has an error, changes to the page should be based data to improve page usability. Please provide suggested information on what should be changed and why to your Marketing Rep for copyediting into the page according to guidelines above. This will help us ensure strategic alignment and consistency in tone and voice throughout the site.
Date-specific events should be created using the calendar tool instead of a webpage for efficiency and search engine optimization.
Metro.net is not an historical archive. To avoid exposing Metro to legal discovery requests regarding content contained on metro.net, we’d like to reiterate that departments are responsible for managing and maintaining their own records. Metro.net is a convenience copy not a records system, and when the content is no longer active we should be able to delete it from metro.net If Records Management is asked to locate something, they will reach out to the content creators’ departments. It is their responsibility to comply with the records policy and retention schedule, not metro.net.
Bi-annual Metro.net review We will run a bi-annual audit of the site to identify low-performing pages and pages that haven’t been updated regularly to see if they should be removed from the site. Reviewing analytics and feedback is an important part of regular cleaning and maintenance of the site, and is meant to ensure our customers have a website that is fast, relevant and easy to use. Pages that are flagged for review will be shared with marketing to determine next steps.
Projects Section:¶
Projects that should have a project page are active projects, plans and other items in development that engage with the public and need to provide public information about a process — these items have a ‘project’ page according to the template and pages follow a specific lifecycle of information:
- For projects in stages of development, once they are operational, the project page goes away and information is incorporated where applicable (i.e. a new rail line will appear on the system map)
- For plans in development, once the plan is adopted, the pages go away and the plan is linked from appropriate ‘how we plan and build’ section if needed, or gets its own page if appropriate
Pages must adhere to template for project pages. This helps to ensure consistency and uniformity across project information to make it easier for the public to find information. Please note, these templates have character limits so as to ensure content is user friendly and concise. Our templates will go through a more formal user-experience (UX) process as we continue to evolve.
For project pages, the overview section should not change unless there are changes to overall project scope. This section needs to remain consistent and retain overarching messaging to properly connect it to Metro’s vision and program of projects.
Detailed updates should be covered on The Source rather than appearing on the page. This helps to keep project pages at a high level to serve members of the general public who are new to the project, prevent project pages from becoming unwieldy with too much information and create a sustainable process for updates. All stories on The Source tagged with the project will feed into the project page via the ‘latest updates’ section. For example, up-to-date COVID updates were made available to the public via the Source and other examples include, Tunnel Boring Machine naming and messaging of Growing a Greener Workforce training classes. To avoid multiple variations of the same tag, please work with your Marketing Rep to ensure the tags are used consistently.
Funded projects don’t get pages. Only projects that Metro manages directly will have pages. If we created pages for every project that we funded, we would have thousands of pages! Rather than appearing on our website, these pages should reference Metro as a funder as outlined in the +Metro Funding Recipient Communication Guidelines.
Accordions are gone. All project documents now go into the ‘documents’ folder at the bottom of the page. Individual files from this folder can be linked in the page copy from this folder, as needed. This folder is housed in a specific Metro enterprise Dropbox that houses all documents linked on the website, with a detailed file structure mirroring the website. When adding documents, please remember to ‘disable comments.’ Files added to this folder must adhere to naming conventions: Start with the date YYYYMMDD, use hypens, and have a name that makes sense to regular people. Ex: 20210130-customer-experience-plan-spanish
For interrelated projects, a general landing page with links to all projects will tie them together (ex: Purple Line (D) Extension, 605 Hotspots). Each project needs to have its own page if it has a separate schedule, documents, milestones and engagement opportunities. Other projects that may be related in other ways can also note the relationship in the appropriate narrative section of the page and link to each other as a way to provide additional context (ex: Airport Metro Connector to Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project, Rio Hondo Station Study to West Santa Ana Branch Transit Corridor).
Project pages should avoid explaining detailed processes or concepts that are common to other projects, or the so-called “project-neutral” information. This helps keep project pages focused on project-specific information, prevent them from becoming unwieldly with too much information, and avoid inconsistencies in explaining processes and concepts that apply to multiple projects. This type of “project neutral” information will appear in the ‘how we plan and build’ section and can be linked to/from project pages where appropriate to provide additional context on widely applicable concepts and processes, such as environmental review, types of rail, first/last mile planning, etc.
First/last mile plans, transit-oriented communities plans or other supporting plans may have their own project pages while in development if they have discreet engagement opportunities and milestones. When finished, these types of plans should be linked in the ‘documents’ folder for the associated project.