Tone of voice is how a brand sounds in writing: the words it picks, how long its sentences run, how formal it is, and how it talks to the reader. The facts in a product description stay the same; the tone decides whether they read like a spec sheet, a friendly shop assistant or a luxury catalog.
For a webshop, tone is what makes 4,000 product descriptions written by different people, suppliers and AI tools read like one store. This guide defines tone of voice, places it on four dimensions, shows the same product written in two tones, gives you a style sheet template for product content, and explains how to apply it across a whole catalog with AI prompts.
Brand voice vs tone of voice: what stays fixed and what flexes
Style guides usually separate the two. Voice is the brand's personality and stays the same everywhere. Tone adjusts to the situation and the reader's state of mind. Mailchimp's public content style guide puts it this way: you have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes, the way you sound different at dinner with close friends than in a meeting with your boss (Mailchimp Content Style Guide).
The same guide describes Mailchimp's voice as direct and clear, relatable and warm, expert enough to demystify jargon, and dry and understated in its humor. It also says being clear is always more important than being entertaining. That is a useful model for product content too. Your voice might be "plain, practical, quietly confident". On a product page the tone leans helpful and specific; in an out-of-stock message it leans apologetic and short; in a size guide it leans patient.
A tone of voice for product content is narrower than a full brand guide. It does not cover your logo or your social posts. It covers titles, descriptions, bullet points, attribute labels and the short texts around them, which together make up most of the words a shopper reads on your site. The dictionary entry on product brand voice guidelines covers what such a guideline document contains.
The four tone of voice dimensions from Nielsen Norman Group
Usability researchers at Nielsen Norman Group describe tone along four dimensions (NN/g, Kate Moran). Each is a scale between two ends, not a choice of one:
- Formal vs casual. "This backpack features a padded compartment" vs "Your laptop gets its own padded pocket."
- Serious vs funny. Most product copy sits near serious. Humor works in a title for a novelty mug, rarely in a description of a smoke detector.
- Respectful vs irreverent. Irreverent copy pokes fun at the category or the competition. It can make a brand memorable and can also alienate the buyer who takes the product seriously.
- Matter-of-fact vs enthusiastic. Matter-of-fact states what the product does. Enthusiastic adds energy: stronger verbs, more adjectives, the occasional exclamation mark.
NN/g also tested how tone changes perception. In a survey of 100 American adults reading near-identical website copy in different tones, trustworthiness explained about 52% of the variation in willingness to recommend a company, and friendliness added only about 8%. Casual, conversational and moderately enthusiastic tones performed best overall, while humor could undermine trust in a serious category such as auto insurance (NN/g). For product content the lesson is simple: friendly helps, but not at the cost of sounding reliable.
NN/g measured perception, not product categories. The table below is editorial advice: a starting position on the four scales for common webshop categories, to adjust once you know your own buyers.
Starting tone positions by product category
| Power tools and industrial supplies | Neutral | Serious | Respectful | Matter-of-fact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baby care and safety products | Neutral | Serious | Respectful | Matter-of-fact |
| Skincare | Casual | Serious | Respectful | Moderately enthusiastic |
| Outdoor and sports gear | Casual | Mostly serious | Respectful | Enthusiastic |
| Toys and party supplies | Casual | Funny where it fits | Light irreverence allowed | Enthusiastic |
| Premium furniture | Formal | Serious | Respectful | Matter-of-fact |
| Gifts and novelty items | Casual | Funny | Irreverent allowed | Enthusiastic |
One daypack, two tones: a product description example
Here is a fictional product with fixed facts: a 20-liter hiking daypack, 640 g, made from recycled 420D nylon, with a padded sleeve for a 15-inch laptop, a removable hip belt and a rain cover stored in the base pocket. Two shops sell it, and each writes it in its own tone.
Version A, matter-of-fact and respectful (a technical outdoor retailer): "A 20-liter daypack for day hikes and commuting. The body is recycled 420D nylon and the pack weighs 640 g. A padded sleeve holds laptops up to 15 inches. The hip belt is removable for city use. A rain cover is stored in the base pocket."
Version B, casual and enthusiastic (a lifestyle outdoor shop): "Big enough for lunch, a layer and your laptop, light enough to forget you're wearing it: 640 g. The 20-liter body is recycled 420D nylon, your 15-inch laptop gets its own padded sleeve, and the hip belt comes off when you're back in town. Caught in a shower? Pull the rain cover out of the base pocket."
Look at what changed and what did not:
- Changed: sentence length (A averages about 9 words, B runs longer with more clauses), who is addressed (A describes the pack, B talks to "you"), verbs (holds vs gets its own), and one rhetorical question in B.
- Unchanged: every fact, every number and every unit. 20 liters, 640 g, 420D, 15 inches. Tone never gets to round, soften or invent a spec.
- Neither version uses "premium", "high-quality" or "perfect for every adventure". Those words carry no information in any tone.
A shorter pair for a B2B product
Tone matters in trade catalogs too, it just sits closer to the formal, matter-of-fact end. Take a fictional 18 V cordless drill driver with a 13 mm chuck and 2 x 2.0 Ah batteries.
- Too casual for most trade buyers: "This little beast chews through anything you throw at it!"
- Matter-of-fact and still readable: "18 V drill driver with a 13 mm keyless chuck, supplied with two 2.0 Ah batteries and a charger. Suitable for drilling in wood and metal and driving screws."
The second line tells a buyer at a building supplies wholesaler exactly what is in the box. That is the tone doing its job.
Tone of voice style sheet template for product content
A tone of voice is only usable when it is written down as rules someone can check. Copy the template below and fill in the middle column for your brand. Keep it to one page: people and AI tools both follow short rules more reliably than long essays.
Product content style sheet template
| Voice in three words | Plain, practical, quietly confident | Describes what the product does before how it feels |
|---|---|---|
| How to address the reader | Second person (you, your); no "we" in product descriptions | "Your laptop gets its own sleeve" |
| Position on the four dimensions | Casual, serious, respectful, matter-of-fact | No jokes in descriptions; light wordplay allowed in campaign titles |
| Sentence length | Average under 15 words; none over 25 | Split any sentence with more than one "and" |
| Description length | 60 to 120 words plus bullets | Short description: one sentence, under 160 characters |
| Words to use | Concrete nouns and measurable claims | "640 g", "fits a 15-inch laptop" |
| Words to avoid | premium, high-quality, revolutionary, perfect for everyone, best-in-class | Replace with the fact that made you want to write it |
| Punctuation | No exclamation marks in descriptions | Allowed once per campaign banner |
| Units and numbers | Metric first, numerals, space before the unit | 20 L, 640 g, 15 inch |
| Product names | Brand and model as the supplier writes them; no ALL CAPS | "Brookfern 20", not "BROOKFERN 20" |
| Claims | No health, eco or safety claim without evidence in the product record | "Made from recycled nylon" only with a source |
| Per language | Informal address in Dutch, German and French | je, du, tu |
Two rules deserve extra care. The words to avoid list is the fastest way to remove generic copy: most filler words appear in thousands of competing listings and tell the shopper nothing. The per language rule matters as soon as you translate: a casual English tone can come out formal in German or Dutch if nobody decides between du and Sie or je and u, and the same shop then sounds like two different brands.
The SEO product descriptions guide covers the structure side (what goes in the first sentence, how to use bullets and keywords). The style sheet covers how that structure sounds.
Applying your tone of voice at catalog scale with AI prompts
A style sheet works for one copywriter. A catalog of thousands of SKUs is written by many hands: supplier descriptions, old migrations, freelancers and AI enrichment. Without explicit instructions, AI-written copy tends to drift toward the same generic phrases you just banned. The fix is to turn the style sheet into a prompt and test it before you run it on everything.
- Write the style sheet first. The prompt is a compressed copy of it, not a replacement.
- Translate rules into instructions. "Address the reader as you. Average sentence under 15 words. No exclamation marks. Never use: premium, high-quality, revolutionary."
- Add one good example. Paste a description you are proud of, labeled as an example of the tone, so the model copies the style rather than the facts.
- Feed it facts, not adjectives. The more attributes the product record holds (material, dimensions, weight, compatibility), the less the model has to fill gaps with filler.
- Test on 10 to 20 products across categories. Include an edge case: a product with almost no data, and one from a serious category.
- Check the output against the sheet, fix the prompt, and test again before running a full batch.
- Spot-check every batch. Read a sample from each category; tone problems cluster by category.
A prompt built this way might start like this: "Write a product description for a webshop. Tone: casual, serious, respectful, matter-of-fact. Address the reader as you. 60 to 120 words, then three bullets. Average sentence under 15 words. Use only facts from the product data; do not invent specifications. Never use: premium, high-quality, revolutionary, perfect for everyone. No exclamation marks. Units: metric, numerals, space before the unit." The ChatGPT prompt for product descriptions template is a worked starting point you can adapt.
Keeping tone consistent across languages
Translation is where tone breaks most often. A strict word-for-word translation keeps the meaning but may carry an English rhythm into Dutch or German. A looser translation reads naturally but needs to know which form of address and which level of formality you chose per language. Put both in your translation instructions, and review a sample with a native speaker. The post on machine translation post-editing explains how to set up that review without re-reading every product.
Storing tone settings in WISEPIM prompts and the Knowledge Library
WISEPIM keeps the pieces of this workflow next to the product data. Every prompt in the prompt library has a Tone of Voice setting, with options such as Professional, Casual, Formal, Humorous, Sophisticated and Direct & Confident, plus Custom for your own wording. Prompts also set the point of view (first person singular or plural, second person, third person), the purpose and the target length.
The Knowledge Library holds the brand side. Its Brand Voice & Tone section has fields for brand personality, communication style, unique phrases and avoided words and phrases. When you enrich products, WISEPIM adds what you filled in there to the enrichment prompt as brand context, so your banned words and signature phrases reach every description without pasting them into each prompt.
To keep a whole catalog on one tone, set a default prompt per enrichment type (description, short description, titles, attributes, SEO title and meta). Every run then starts from the same instructions unless someone picks another prompt for a single run. Prompt Lab lets you test a prompt on one product and compare the original with the output before you run it on thousands. For translations, per-language settings include a formality choice (formal, informal or neutral), so Dutch can stay on je while another language uses its formal form. And Quality Guard rules can flag a description that contains a banned word or falls outside your word count range.
