Roger Dooley at Neuromarketing reports that in an a effort to add an emotional layer to websites, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main standards body for the Web, has released a draft for an Emotional Markup Language spec to be used in future web builds.

Everyday across the web people are hurt, annoyed or just plain confused by what they read. Despite the often colloquial tone of the web, we lack the visual and verbal clues we draw on for communicating. “I COMPLETELY agree with everything you said” can be interpreted a number of different ways and is just one example of how an additional emotional cues would help communication.

The Emotional Markup Language put forward by the W3C is effectively on the drawing board. In the mean time, can you see brands having the confidence to use emoticons in their comms? Does your brands online tone have enough emotion to sufficiently portray your desired customer experience?

By Colin Shaw | Published: January 26, 2010