Blue Wave Concept's Blog

Setting the Tone

There are two key points to determine before defining the appropriate tone for your website.
Who is your target audience?

What is their age group?
Where are they located: urban or rural, domestic or international?
What sort of values do they hold: conservative, ethical, cautious, impulsive or economical?
More importantly, what do they want from you?

What does your website want to achieve?

Is it an e-commerce site designed to generate sales?
Is it a portfolio of your work?
Is it educational?
Does it offer an online community for users to engage with?
Is it meant to draw in new consumers, support existing ones, or both?

These are both points that should have guided the visual design of a website and, equally, they should be the force behind its content.

Forgetting the target audience or the ultimate purpose of the website sounds like an unimaginable faux pas, but it happens surprisingly frequently.

Developing Tonal Guidelines

Once you’ve determined your audience and your site’s purpose, you’re halfway to deciding on tone of voice. It may be helpful to consider the personality of an employee you’d want to represent your brand at this point.

For example, if you’re advertising housing for students, you want someone friendly, open and fun. If you’re selling organic fruit on the Web: you want your representative to sound healthy and ethical. If you’re describing services at a care home: you want someone kind, professional and understanding. You get the idea.

These adjectives are a good start, but they’re all subjective. The next step is to start defining what these adjectives mean and don’t mean.

Things to Watch Out For

Watch out for other basic inconsistencies that will blemish your hard work on tone. No matter how seamlessly professional your tone is, a typo or misplaced punctuation mark will make you look foolish.

Here are two tips:

A proofreader is not optional. Of course, the writer should proofread the first draft, but there is no substitute for a fresh perspective.
Edit without mercy. Cut, cut, cut. If you can identify unnecessary words, then remove them and get to the point.

Summary

To briefly outline the points we’ve covered:
- Tone of voice, used well, will strengthen brand loyalty and set businesses apart from competitors.
- Tone can be adapted according to the audience and platform, but ensure that the voice remains constant.
- The key considerations in choosing a tone of voice for your website are 1) the target audience and 2) the type of interaction you intend them to have with your site.
- Producing a tonal guideline sheet (example shown above) will help establish and maintain a distinctive tone of voice. Used as a reference by copywriters, it will yield consistent results, especially where multiple authors are involved.