How to extract a brand voice from a website

1. Pick the pages that carry voice

Not every page is equal. Your about or story page is the brand talking about itself, so it carries the most personality. Product and feature pages show how you sell. One or two blog posts show your long-form rhythm. Pricing tables, legal pages and help docs show very little, and reading them dilutes the picture. Five good pages beat fifty average ones.

If you have writing the website doesn't show (newsletters, a brochure, a pitch deck), add it. If it represents the voice you want better than the site does, give it more weight.

2. Strip everything that isn't writing

Copy the text without navigation menus, footers, cookie banners and repeated sign-up boxes. Repeated chrome makes generic phrases look like brand habits. Keep headings and button labels: they are some of the most deliberate writing on the site.

3. Measure before you describe

Adjectives are where voice guides go wrong. Everyone thinks their brand is clear, warm and confident. Counting is more honest:

• Typical sentence length, and how many sentences are very short.
• Whether you use exclamation marks, emoji, dashes, questions, at all.
• Whether headlines are sentence case or Title Case, and whether they end with a full stop.
• How often you say you versus we.
• Whether you write it's or it is.

These become the rules an assistant can actually check.

4. Separate facts from style

Two different things live in your copy: what you say (you roast twice a week, you serve agencies) and how you say it (short lines, dry humour). Keep them in separate sections. Style rules apply to everything; facts are the only claims the assistant may make. Without that split, assistants blend your voice with invented details.

5. Back every trait with a quote

For each trait, find two or three lines that show it, and copy them exactly. If you can't find a line that shows a trait, you may be describing the brand you want rather than the one you have. That is fine, but mark it as a recommendation, not an observation.

6. Write behaviour, not mood

Turn each trait into instructions about sentences and words. “Confident” becomes “state the outcome first, no hedging words, no exclamation marks”. “Playful” becomes “one dry aside per section at most, never a pun in a headline”, or whatever your writing actually does.

7. Resolve conflicts on purpose

Most sites have more than one voice: a polished homepage, a chattier blog, stiff product pages. Decide which one wins for which format, and write that down. Otherwise the assistant averages them into something that sounds like none.

A template to fill in

# [Brand] brand voice

[Two sentences: what a reader notices first, and what separates
this voice from others in the category.]

## Voice traits
### [Trait as a contrast, e.g. "Direct, not blunt"]
- Do: [behaviour in a sentence]
- Don't: [the specific failure]
- Sounds like: "[real line from your site]"

## Mechanics (measured)
- Median sentence: [n] words
- Exclamation marks: [never / rarely / often]
- Headings: [sentence case / Title Case]

## Vocabulary
- Use: [words you actually use]
- Write exactly: [product names]
- Avoid: [words that would sound wrong]

## Brand facts
- [Only facts stated on your site]

8. Test it on something new

Give the guide to an assistant and ask for a piece you haven't written before, like a feature announcement. Read it next to your real copy. Where it slips, add a rule. Two or three rounds usually get you there.

The shortcut

Saylike does steps 1 to 7 automatically: it picks the pages, strips the chrome, measures the writing, separates facts from style, checks every quote against your site, and marks inferred rules. It produces the result as a Claude skill, a Markdown guide and ChatGPT instructions. Step 8 is built in too: the result page can write a short sample with your new skill.