Developing a ‘product voice’ to unify payroll with the rest of the product and the Zeal brand

There were many instances where our product language didn’t put forth the professional and knowledgable persona Zeal wanted within the industry. When the team and I annotated competitor’s screens, we also annotated our own, keeping track of when language failed customers or just didn’t make sense.

It was important to me that customers weren’t expected to be payroll experts. Zeal’s software should guide customers to accomplish their goals, and language plays a major part of that. Many money movement products utilize a type of jargon that don’t inspire confidence. I felt strongly that we should rethink how payroll could be communicated to everyday people. 

Christina Glass, Zeal’s brand designer, and I teamed up to determine a consistent voice and grammar for all areas of the business, including both the marketing and product realm.

Fig. 8: Screenshots of Zeal’s language audit, a collaboration between the brand designer and myself.