Hi, how are you today?
Odd way to start a blog post, isn’t it? But stick with me, because that one little question is doing a lot of work. It’s talking to you, not at you. And that’s exactly what this post is about.
I’ve spent more than 20 years building websites for small businesses, and I’ve read a lot of copy in that time. The sites that do well nearly always share one thing: they sound like a real person is talking. The ones that struggle tend to read like a brochure that’s been through a committee.
Think about it from your visitor’s point of view. They’ve landed on your website because they’ve got a problem and they’re hoping you can solve it. If the first thing they read is “We deliver best-in-class solutions across a range of verticals”, they’ve got no idea whether you’re the right fit. If instead they read “We fix leaking taps in Colchester, usually the same day”, they know exactly where they stand. One of those sounds like a person. The other sounds like a robot in a suit.
A conversational tone builds trust, keeps people on the page longer, and makes your call to action feel like a natural next step rather than a hard sell. It’s also, frankly, much easier to write once you get the hang of it.
So here are my 5 golden rules for writing in a conversational tone. I’ve added a prompt under each one so you can put it into practice straight away.
1. Add personality
Your business isn’t a faceless corporation, so don’t write like one. Let your personality come through in your content. If you’ve got a saying you use all the time, use it. If you’ve had an experience your reader will recognise, share it.
I’ll give you an example. I could tell you “we prioritise clear communication with clients”. Or I could tell you that I once had a client ring me in a panic because their site had gone down on launch day, and the fix took four minutes but the phone call took forty because we ended up talking about his fishing trip. The second one tells you far more about how I work, and it’s a lot more memorable.
Personality is what makes people remember you. In a market where every plumber, accountant and solicitor is offering a broadly similar service, being the one who sounds human is a real advantage.
Prompt: Write down three phrases you find yourself saying to customers on the phone. Now find a place on your website where one of them could replace a stiff, formal sentence.
The benefit: Readers start to feel like they know you before they’ve ever met you. That familiarity makes the decision to get in touch a lot easier.
2. Keep your sentences small and your words simple
When you’re writing in a conversational tone, short sentences are your friend. If a sentence runs past two lines, break it up. Swap long words for shorter ones with fewer syllables. Say “use” instead of “utilise” and “help” instead of “facilitate”.
Flowery prose and dense technical descriptions belong in novels and textbooks. Your website has a different job. People skim, they read on their phones, and they’ve usually got three other tabs open. Short sentences and plain words respect that.
A quick test I use: read the paragraph out loud. If you run out of breath, or trip over a word, your reader will too.
Prompt: Take your homepage introduction and count the words in each sentence. Anything over 25 words gets split in two. Then hunt for any word you’d never say out loud in conversation and replace it.
The benefit: Your content becomes easier to read and easier to understand, which means more people actually get to the bit where you tell them how to contact you.
3. Talk directly to your reader
Conversational tone is all about talking to the individual, not the crowd. Write as if you’re talking to one friend across a table. That means using “you” and “I” (or “we”), and avoiding the third person wherever you can.
Compare these two:
“Customers can expect a prompt response to all enquiries.”
“Send me a message and I’ll get back to you the same day.”
The first one is talking about a vague group of people somewhere out there. The second is talking to you. It’s warmer, it’s clearer, and it’s making a promise rather than describing a policy.
Contractions help here too. “I’ll”, “you’re”, “we’ve” and “don’t” are how people actually speak. Writing “I will” and “you are” everywhere makes your copy sound like it’s wearing a tie it doesn’t want to be wearing.
Prompt: Search your website for the words “customers”, “clients” and “users”. Each time you find one, ask whether you could swap it for “you”. Most of the time, you can.
The benefit: Your reader feels seen. Copy written to “you” feels like it was written for them specifically, and that’s a powerful thing when they’re deciding who to trust.
4. Ask questions
Asking questions is one of the best ways to engage your reader. It invites them into the conversation rather than leaving them on the outside looking in. A well placed question makes someone pause and think, and that moment of thinking is when your content starts to land.
Questions also do a practical job. They break your content into smaller, more digestible chunks. A question at the start of a section works like a signpost, telling the reader what’s coming and why it matters to them.
You’ll have noticed I’ve been doing this throughout the post. It’s not an accident.
What questions do you think you could ask your readers? Start with the ones they’re already asking themselves before they arrive on your site. “How much does it cost?” “How long will it take?” “What if it goes wrong?” Answer those honestly and you’ve done half the selling already.
Prompt: List the five questions you get asked most often by new enquiries. Turn each one into a subheading somewhere on your site, then answer it underneath in plain English.
The benefit: Questions keep people reading, and they show you understand what your visitor is worried about. That understanding is often the difference between a browse and an enquiry.
5. Use relatable stories
Everybody loves a story. It’s how we’ve shared information for thousands of years, and it still works better than a bullet list of features. Conversational writing gives you room to tell stories that illustrate a point, share the emotion behind it, and let your reader see themselves in it.
You don’t need a dramatic tale. A story can be as simple as “A client came to me last month with a website that hadn’t been updated since 2017. Their phone had gone quiet and they couldn’t work out why.” Anyone who’s been in that position feels it immediately. They’re nodding along before you’ve even got to the solution.
Stories are relatable in a way that claims aren’t. “We improve website performance” is a claim. “Within six weeks of the rebuild, she’d had more enquiries than in the previous six months” is a story, and it does the same job far more convincingly.
Prompt: Think of one client who had a problem your ideal customer will recognise. Write three or four sentences about where they started, what you did, and where they ended up. Put it on your services page.
The benefit: Stories build an emotional connection and make your results feel real. People remember stories long after they’ve forgotten a list of benefits.
Putting it all together
Writing conversationally isn’t about being unprofessional. It’s about being clear, being human, and remembering there’s a real person on the other end of the screen. Add some personality, keep it short and simple, talk to “you”, ask questions, and tell a story or two. Do that and your website will start sounding like the business people actually deal with when they pick up the phone.
Need a hand putting any of this into practice? Take a look at our WordPress web design services, or book a call and we can talk it through.
