Voice and Tone

Voice

The Signal Sciences voice is an extension of our design principles. It helps us craft a better experience by making sure we stay true to our personality whenever we communicate with users.

Signal Sciences is:

Optimistic but not playful

What makes us different is our optimism in an industry historically associated with fearmongering. This means we communicate in a way that feels positive, friendly, and informal. Our optimism helps us focus on how we make our customers’ lives better.

Using friendly and informal language doesn’t mean we’re ok with becoming flippant or casual. Playful humor is not part of our nature.

  • We are: Friendly, Ambitious, Informal
  • We are not: Snarky, Silly, Whimsical

Just Right

We’re built to match the fast-paced rhythm of constant code deploys––so you can keep delivering applications fast while staying secure.

  • An optimistic voice focuses on benefits.
  • Be informal and friendly while still confident.

Too Playful

Did you know that your application could be jeopardized and left vulnerable to attacks without leveraging critical application protection? 🤔 We’re super excited to empower the DevOps lifecycle 🤓with Signal Sciences! 🥳💪

  • Emojis are too playful and distracting. They break up sentence flow.
  • It’s offputting to emphasize repercussions using playful affectations.

Expert but not impersonal

We know that our customers are skeptical people tired of having to translate corporate jargon, so we speak in a concise and easy to understand way. We’re comfortable with being conversational because our customers trust us and see us as leaders.

Our voice is strongest when we’re able to strike the right balance of communicating our expertise without being dry and emotionless.

  • We are: Trustworthy, Perceptive, Respectful
  • We are not: Emotionless, Dry, Corporate

Just Right

Whether you’re a well-established company or a small startup, we’re built to fit into your process without interrupting your current workflows.

  • Speak directly in second person (you) to sound approachable.
  • Keep it conversational––write in the same way you would speak to a colleague.
  • Show our expertise by being perceptive to our customers’ concerns.

Too Impersonal

Enabling top tier businesses to improve threat intelligence by powering the next frontier in digital transformation and seamlessly integrating into their current workflows.

  • Writing in third person sounds too impersonal.
  • Corporate jargon loses the reader’s interest and can sound meaningless.

Confident but not sensational

We know what it’s like to deal with vendors that overpromise and underdeliver––having once been in that position ourselves. We don’t feel the need to exaggerate because we’re confident and proud of our work.

Confidence pushes us to make a bigger impact with fewer words and to cut out ambiguous filler. We know that trust is earned and shouldn’t be taken for granted. We’re careful not to sound boastful and never put down others.

  • We are: Relatable, Honest, Proud
  • We are not: Aggressive, Boastful, Long-Winded

Just Right

We do the heavy lifting to protect your apps with our smart decisioning technology, so you don’t have to waste time fixing false positives or tuning.

  • Keep it short and direct.
  • Speak to customers in a relatable way that makes them feel understood.

Too Sensational

Elevate your application protection to the next level with unparalleled technology that will further increase your bottom line and unleash your potential to detect and prevent targeted web layer attacks without drowning in false positives or endless tuning.

  • Long-winded sentences lose focus on the main idea. It’s too long if it’s difficult to read out loud.
  • Sensational language can sound aggressive and boastful.

Tone

While our voice should always remain consistent, our tone can change depending on the situation:

  • We know that working in security is an important and high-impact job that can be stressful. Encountering an error message can add to this stress, so we may embody a more direct, authoritative tone to let the user know we take their situation seriously.
  • If a user succeeds in completing an action such as configuring a rule, our tone adjusts to be more lighthearted and congratulatory to boost their confidence in using our product.

Our aim is to always be a good listener and connect emotionally with our users on a human level.