Common Tone Mistakes in E‑Commerce Content and Their Impact on AI Visibility

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands often focus on SEO and keywords, but our research shows that tone of content has become a critical factor now that AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews synthesize answers for users. If your product pages or blogs use the wrong tone, AI tools may misunderstand or ignore your content, hurting your visibility and discoverability.

In fact, we found that tone-related mistakes can make your content invisible to these AI platforms, even if your traditional SEO is strong.

Below, we break down the most common tone mistakes in ecommerce content, how they confuse or mislead AI, how different engines respond, and what your team can do to fix it.

1. Mistake #1: Vague or Ambiguous Language

AI engines don’t guess; they extract. When ecommerce content is packed with vague phrases like “premium materials” or “cutting-edge features,” it leaves both readers and AI with no concrete information to work with.

We saw this repeatedly in our research: brands that used generic, empty language were far less likely to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews even if their SEO was solid.

Why This Confuses AI Engines

AI models like ChatGPT rely on explicit details to interpret, summarize, and cite content. When your page is filled with abstract claims or poetic intros, it forces the model to either:

• Misinterpret the content,

• Skip over it entirely, or

• Pull from a competitor with clearer language.

In one case, a vague blog intro that buried the actual answer several paragraphs down was skipped completely by the AI, it favored a competitor’s content that stated the answer upfront. 

What It Looks Like in Practice

Impact on AI Visibility

Clear, fact-based language is more likely to:

• Appear in Google’s AI Overviews (especially in bullet summaries),

• Be summarized accurately in ChatGPT (especially with browsing or plugin access),

• Get cited in Perplexity responses.

Meanwhile, vague marketing speak gets filtered out.

Even if your page ranks well traditionally, AI tools prioritize extractable clarity not fluff. That means if you’re relying on soft adjectives instead of specifics, you’re invisible in the new AI layer of search.

How to Fix It

• Swap adjectives for data: Replace “high quality” with “made from 100% organic cotton, 300 thread count.”

• Get to the point fast: Don’t bury key info in long intros. Lead with the answer, then elaborate.

• Use structured formats: Bullet points, short paragraphs, and Q&A styles make your content easier for AI to parse.

• Audit for empty phrases: Comb through your product pages and blog content. Highlight any sentence that sounds good but says nothing and rewrite it to add value.

2. Mistake #2: Excessive Hype and Marketing Jargon

Another common tone pitfall is writing in an overly promotional or corporate voice – the kind filled with superlatives, buzzwords, and self-congratulatory phrases. We’ve all seen product pages that read like pure ad copy: “Revolutionary solution from the industry leader that will blow your mind!” or press-release style blog posts touting “cutting-edge synergy” and “leading provider of innovative solutions” without tangible substance. This kind of language might sound exciting to a marketer, but it often backfires with AI engines (and savvy customers).

Why This Confuses AI Engines

AI models are designed to summarize and extract information users can trust. When a page is overloaded with hype and lacks specific facts, the AI:

• Struggles to find meaningful data,

• Parrots back your buzzwords (making the answer sound fake), or

• Skips your content entirely in favor of a more neutral, fact-based source.

Example: If your product page says, “This is a best-in-class skincare formula,” ChatGPT might repeat the same vague marketing phrase in its answer that but without proof, it leaves the user asking, “OK… but what’s actually in it, and why does it work?”

In multiple citation studies, these types of jargon-heavy pages ranked lower in citation frequency. In other words: more hype equals less visibility.

AI Platform Behavior

Even if Perplexity pulls your content, exaggerated language stands out but not in a good way.

How to Fix It

• Cut buzzwords: Replace hype with specifics features, data, benefits, or comparisons.

• Sound human, not corporate: Imagine explaining your product to a friend, not writing a press release.

• Use a language transformation exercise: Take one page and rewrite every grandiose phrase into something useful and verifiable.

• Adopt a conversational tone: Write like a smart Reddit user: clear, confident, and no fluff.

• Front-load the value: Don’t start a blog with “We’re excited to share…” start with the benefit.

AI models understand nuance and context. What they’re missing is substance over spin. Tone it down, back it up, and you’ll start showing up more often with answers that actually drive conversions.

3. Mistake #3: Inconsistent Brand Voice

Consistency in voice and tone is key to brand recognition – and it turns out to matter for AI interpretation as well. Inconsistent voice means your content doesn’t have a unified personality or style. 

For example, your social media posts may be witty and casual, but your product descriptions read like dry technical manuals, while your blog oscillates between academic tone and slapstick humor. This “tone whiplash” is confusing to customers and can also dilute how AI perceives your brand content.

Why It Confuses AI (and Customers)

Think of your brand voice as a narrator. If that narrator keeps switching from witty to robotic to jargon-filled, your story becomes incoherent.

For AI engines, this lack of consistency shows up as:

• Uneven quality signals,

• Unclear subject authority, or

• Contradictory tone across formats (e.g. helpful blog vs. stiff product page).

AI doesn’t inherently “know” that all your content is from the same brand. It evaluates each page on its own and if your voice fluctuates, only the clearest, most helpful pages will earn visibility.

To summarise this  inconsistency erodes trust, both algorithmically and emotionally.

Impact on AI Visibility

AI systems reward cohesive voice and quality. If only half your content meets that bar, you only get half the results while a competitor with a strong, steady tone gets cited across multiple pages.

How to Fix It:

• Define your voice: Are you technical and expert? Playful and direct? Write it down with examples.

• Standardize it: Use that voice in product pages, FAQs, blogs, and emails, not just ads.

• Audit your content: If your homepage tone doesn’t match your blog, fix the weakest link.

• Use AI tone tools if needed: Train writers or editors to spot off-brand phrasing before it gets published.

• Allow flexibility by format, but not by personality: Your tone can be lighter on Instagram and more instructional on PDPs but it should always sound like you.

Quick Tone Check Framework

Consistency doesn’t mean monotone. It means your content sounds like it’s all coming from the same trusted source no matter the format.

If AI engines perceive you as fragmented, they’ll default to brands that speak with clarity and cohesion. But if you maintain a steady voice, you get cited more often, trusted more quickly, and seen more clearly.

How Erlin Helps You Fix Tone Gaps AI Engines Notice

Inconsistent tone is more than just a writing problem; it's a visibility problem.

That’s why Erlin was built to do more than generate content. Erlin helps DTC brands create AI-readable content in a consistent, brand-safe voice across every content type.

Whether you're writing a product description, a blog post, or a landing page, Erlin ensures your content:

• Sounds like your brand, not a generic AI.

• Stays structured and specific, so AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews can confidently quote or summarize it.

• Eliminates vague, hypey, or inconsistent phrasing that gets filtered out of generative answers.

Want to see how Erlin can tune your brand voice for AI visibility? Book a call for a personalized demo.

AI Visibility Starts With Clarity

As AI engines continue to shape how users discover products, tone is no longer a soft skill, it's a ranking signal.

Every vague phrase, hypey headline, or inconsistent voice increases the chances that AI will ignore your content or misrepresent your brand. And with platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews now sitting at the top of the funnel, clarity and tone consistency are directly tied to discoverability.

The brands that win will be the ones who:

• Write clearly and concretely.

• Stay consistent across channels.

• Speak with a tone that both customers and AI can understand and trust.

Getting found in this new era depends not only on what you say, but also on how you say it.

The next wave of visibility belongs to brands who sound like they know what they’re talking about. Because in a world run by LLMs, clarity is currency.