Directions for Customers Who Arrive by Bus or SkyTrain

Directions written for drivers

Most contact pages give directions for one kind of customer: the one driving. Which exit to take, where to park, whether the lot is free after six.

Across much of the Lower Mainland, plenty of customers never get behind a wheel to reach you. Students, people who live downtown, visitors from out of town and anyone tired of hunting for parking come by bus, SkyTrain or bicycle.

For them the page has nothing. The pin on the map shows where the building is, not how to get from the platform to its door.

What someone on foot needs

• The nearest station or stop, by name, and the routes that serve it.
• Which exit to use and which way to turn outside it.
• How long the walk takes at an ordinary pace.
• A landmark or two along the way.
• The entrance itself, if it is not on the main street.
• Where to lock a bike, and whether it can come inside.

The fifth is the one that turns a short walk into ten lost minutes. A door in the lane, a shared lobby or an upstairs suite is obvious to staff and invisible to someone arriving for the first time.

Why the map app is not enough

Map apps give transit directions, and they handle the bus or train part well. They are weaker over the last hundred metres.

The pin may sit in the middle of a building with doors on two streets, or on the wrong side of a mall. The suggested route may end at an entrance that is locked after five.

No app knows what you know: that one exit from the station saves crossing a busy road, or that the path behind the plaza is quicker and better lit.

While you are at it, check where your pin sits on Google Maps and in your Google My Business listing, and move it to the door if it is off.

Write it as a walk

Good transit directions read like a friend's: leave the station by the exit facing the supermarket, turn left, walk two blocks past the bank, and look for the green door beside the bakery.

Give a time rather than a distance. Few people can picture four hundred metres, but everyone knows what a six-minute walk feels like.

Mention stairs or a steep hill, and whether there is a step-free way. A customer with a stroller, a walker or a heavy bag will want to know before setting out.

One short paragraph per route is plenty. Most businesses need two: from the nearest station and from the busiest bus stop.

Bicycles

A cyclist wants to know where to lock up before setting off, not on arrival. Say where the nearest rack is, whether it is covered, and whether bikes can come inside.

If there is no rack, say where people usually lock up, and ask the landlord whether one could be added.

A marked bike route nearby is worth a line too, since it tells a cyclist which way to approach.

Evenings and the dark

The clocks go back on Sunday, and from then on anyone coming to an evening appointment walks from the stop in the dark.

If the shortest route runs through an unlit lane or an empty parking lot, offer the slightly longer one along the lit street, and say which entrance is open in the evening.

For late finishes, a note on the last convenient bus or train is a kindness, as long as someone checks it whenever the schedules change.

A worked example

A life drawing studio runs drop-in evening sessions with a model in a second-floor room above a row of shops, two blocks from a SkyTrain station.

Many of the people who come are art students and illustrators from around the region, carrying drawing boards and bags of supplies, and most of them arrive by train.

The contact page said only: free parking in the lot behind the building after six. The door to the stairs is in the lane beside that lot, and the street side has nothing but shop fronts.

Newcomers walked the block twice looking for a way in, and arrived after the short warm-up poses had started, the part many regulars like best.

The studio added a paragraph to the contact page: from the station, take the exit toward the shops, walk two blocks, turn into the lane after the dry cleaner, and look for the blue door.

It is a flat, five-minute walk, and the lane is lit. The same paragraph now goes out in the email confirming each first booking, and the lane door has a small sign at eye level.

Put it where people look

The directions belong on the contact page, under a plain heading such as by bus, SkyTrain or bike, alongside the driving directions rather than buried inside them.

They belong in confirmation emails for appointments, bookings and classes too, since that is where a first-time customer looks on the way.

Link to the contact page from the footer of every page, so someone reading on a phone at the station reaches it in one tap.

Walk it yourself

Before publishing, walk the route once from the station with the paragraph in hand, at the time of day most customers come.

Fix whatever you had to guess. Directions written from memory leave out the turn everyone on staff takes without thinking.

The counter-case

Some businesses really do serve drivers almost entirely: a nursery on a rural road, a yard whose customers leave with loads too big to carry. A line naming the nearest bus stop is enough there.

A shop whose door faces a main street a few steps from a station needs little more than the station's name.

But wherever the entrance is hidden, the walk is longer than a few minutes, or customers are often students and visitors, a short paragraph for people on foot is worth writing this week.

This week

1. Name the nearest station and bus stops.
2. Walk the route from each one yourself.
3. Write the walk with landmarks and a time.
4. Describe the entrance if it is hidden.
5. Say where to lock a bicycle.
6. Check that the map pin sits at the door.
7. Add the directions to confirmation emails.

Step four is the detail most often missing. The walk from a station is usually simple; finding an unmarked door at the end of it is where a first-time customer gives up or arrives late.

Customers who are new to the area are also the subject of students arriving in September.

Frequently asked questions

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