A giant sign by the shopping carts near the entrance in an Ikea store reads: “Grab a cart. You’re going to have your hands full.”

Traditionally, such a sign would probably read something like “shopping carts here”, “please find carts here” or perhaps simply “shopping carts”. Or no text at all, but a symbol, like a traffic sign. Ikea, perceived as a company selling simple yet stylish design at affordable prices, has chosen to use conversational language in its communication, incl. store signage, instead of the authoritative, rather impersonal language typically used in traffic signs, public as well as commercial spaces (think of “no smoking” and “please wait behind this line” instead of something like “you can put that cigarette away here” and “hold on tight, we’ll be right with you”).

Online, I remember Feedburner has always featured quite clever, “chatty” language throughout the experience on its site (nowadays under Google). “Burn a feed right this instant” and “Sometimes your feed just wants to look good. Spruce it up in the following ways:”  for instance. Or Firefox after it crashes and can’t recover the tabs you had open before the crash, says “Well this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble recovering your…” It makes it sound like the software (company) is admitting ownership of the problem, instead of implicating the user as the source of the problem, like so many error messages do.

It’s important to recognize when it’s most efficient to use conversational vs. more formal language. In an online form, for example, it may be best to switch the language to give directions like “please make sure to give at least one phone number”, while the headline of the form can still be written in a more conversational, casual style: “This’ll only take you a minute. But it’ll save you an hour later.*

You can argue that not all companies, brands, or services should use casual, conversational language. And of course, it depends on your target audience, too. But when you look at the world we live in, how our societies and culture have evolved, choosing a conversational style seems to make more sense than ever. In the online world in particular, because it’s two-way communication, and it’s all about conversations. It makes sense to talk to your audience like you’re having a conversation with them, not like you’re giving them orders or begging them to do something so that the system you’ve built can work.

Karri Ojanen

More about this in the blogosphere:
Conversational Writing vs. Formal Writing
Creating Conversation