How to remain true to your brand while building your new website?

brand consistency how to remain true to your brand

Welcome to the rollercoaster world of startups – full of excitement, ever-growing anticipations, adrenaline-pumping experiments, and some major life-changing experiences. While the growth of a startup can be dependent on about a gazillion factors, the one that is the most crucial is brand consistency.

According to research, when customers report a “positive feeling” from a brand, they are more connected to that business, making them far more likely to transact. This applies to B2C and B2B brands! Once you’ve locked your identity, brand values, positioning, and targeting, it’s time to carve an exclusive experience for your target audience through your website. This goes well beyond just the logo that you see at the top left corner of your site.

Everything – from the colors or fonts that you choose to the content that you put out is a shadow of your brand. But slapping them together just for the sake of drawing attention can make visitors have second thoughts about your brand.

So what should you do? Try and imbibe these four tips to build a website that enables brand consistency and helps you to remain true to your brand identity without compromising on the user’s experience!

Start with a cohesive color scheme

Seeing red. Feeling blue. Tickled pink.

Common idioms used in our day-to-day lives are a great example of how we often associate colors with emotions. Whether it’s red with aggression, blue with serenity, or black with power. Colors are the subconscious reason behind the way you paint your house, the outfits you wear, or even the food that you’re most drawn to. So there’s no surprise that the colors you pick for your website will subconsciously alter the experience for your users. And it doesn’t mean that you have to completely depend on the color of your logo. Let’s break this down:

  • Start by identifying your brand’s personality. What are the few adjectives that describe your business? Casual? Modern? Playful?
  • Who are you targeting? What are their taste and palate?
  • Once you’ve identified your key traits and users, it’s time to pick colors that best embody those adjectives. This is where color psychology comes into play.
color psychology
  • Now that you have your core brand colors decided, integrate them into your website. Use a dominant color as a base and apply it throughout your website headlines, CTAs, background images, – basically, areas that people naturally gravitate towards. Use subtle shades to the more functional aspects of your website like top menu, navigational bars, sidebar icons, etc.

In most cases, using just two or three colors is perceived as appealing. Sticking to a color palette becomes very important for brand consistency and ultimately your business.

Also Read: How does digital branding impact your business in today’s age?

Understand the influence of whitespace

When you look at the web design of successful websites like Apple, Dropbox, or Shopify, you’ll realize that there’s one thing that dictates all – the use of whitespace.

Whitespace is one of the most overlooked and underutilized aspects of a great web layout. In fact, research conducted by Human Factors International shows that whitespace boosts comprehension by 20%.

When you’re putting together a website, it can be tempting to fill it up with as much content, images, or elements as possible. We can understand the excitement of sharing everything about your business with your visitors. However, sometimes the result ends up looking something like this:

white spaces

Enter, whitespace. It is exactly what it sounds like, and despite its apparent simplicity, it’s a vital part of any visual design. Apart from giving a higher degree of sophistication and prestige to a website’s UI, whitespace design is very beneficial for a user’s readability and navigating their attention. It helps by providing an absorbable amount of content to the user upfront, it causes you to prioritize which content to show first and how much emphasis to place on it.

Communicate through your typography

typography

Yes, the words on your website matter but how those words look plays an equally important role. While less flashy than colors and imagery, your brand’s font tells a story by bringing a voice and personality to your website. Hence they must maintain brand consistency. There are a variety of styles to choose from, but it doesn’t mean you go overboard with them.  There certainly should be a balance when selecting fonts. Don’t go with just one single style which makes it hard to differentiate between sections of content. Nor with so many that it becomes too distracting for the user. The best path is to swing between two to four fonts and use them across all your communication.

Whether you go for classic serif or distinctive decorative fonts, make sure they are readable enough at first glance. If your headline, subheading, or copy is difficult to read, no matter what font you choose, you will run a risk of losing a reader even before they head on to the content.

Add a touch of graphics

graphics brand consistency

We’ve all heard that “content is king”, but well-written blogs, product descriptions, or any important information on your website is incomplete without some good imagery. The images you use on your website add a visual appeal but there is more to them than just aesthetics. The graphics on your website make the content more memorable.  Use subtle imagery that doesn’t distract visitors from the brand messaging. Whether stock photography, product images, gifs, or infographics, make sure they are of the best quality, compliment, or add to the content and are placed where your audience can best understand them.

Looking for branding done for your business? Drop us a message here and we would love to help.

How does digital branding impact your business in today’s age?

How does digital branding impact your business in todays age

Every business wants its website’s users to have the best of experience. To help them understand the company’s core value and offering instantly and seamlessly –  but do all of them succeed in it? If you’re one of those who wonder, then this blog on the importance of digital branding is for you!

Table of Content:

For example, let’s think of owners of a hundred websites getting a decent amount of traffic every month.

Shout out loud, “Who wants more traffic?” You’ll see 101 hands flailing up high.

If you want, you can get good website traffic through hundreds of traffic generation strategies available out there. A simple Google search, and you’ll see there is no shortage of resources out there that can tell you how to bring up the number of visitors to your website. But of what use are these users if they aren’t even interacting with your brand? When they don’t fall in love with your brand or don’t end up buying your product. Do they not understand your brand or just like your competitor better? More importantly, what can you do to turn this around?

This is where digital branding comes into play!

Working extensively towards increasing your brand’s users without clearly telling them who you are, what you do, and what makes you different is one of the main reasons why your brand isn’t generating loyalists or the organic appeal you want to have in the market.

What Is Digital Branding?

Digital branding isn’t that different from branding in general. While branding creates an identity of a company with its name, logo, design, etc., digital branding is how it is presented online through the website, social or digital media. It’s all about understanding what sets a business apart and delivering that message to its online audience.

what is digital branding

Why is Digital Branding important for you?

It is your job as a business to help your online visitors and users understand the value that they might not be able to see, especially since price and time are the two most important factors today. The importance of digital branding comes down to the successful communication of your business belief and value creation for the customer. Think of it as a tool that translates your brand across digital channels. Ever came across a product’s website that isn’t necessarily cheap but provides an even superior experience than most of its competitors? This is an example of a successful digital brand building.

Why is Digital Branding important for you

Your Website = Heart of your Digital Branding:

Your website is the place where all your transactions happen – be it acquiring new leads or directly selling your goods. So let’s take a look at some inspiring digital branding examples!

stripe

When you visit Stripe’s website, you’re instantly drawn in with a headline, “Payments infrastructure for the internet”. The copy hits the brand’s offer and core value in 4 simple words. The explanation that follows up describes who the service is for (online businesses) and what it does (handles high traffic online payments, regardless of the size of your company).

  • Beautycounter
beautycounter

A disruptor in the beauty and skincare industry, Beautycounter uses its website to deliver the brand’s core message. As soon as you get to their website, you already know what you’re going to sign up for. A clear CTA button on the homepage instantly redirects you to a page where you can compare Beautycounter with similar brands in the market and see how it stands out. You will find more informative material about their products and the brand as you scroll through.

  • Sonos
sonos

Sonos’ website teaches us that products or services which are technically complex should be rather easier to explain. A producer of wireless sound systems, Sonos lets their product take the center stage with high-value messaging. With a clean design as well as a strong tone of voice, it’s evident that they understand their audience and know how to pose their product to their audience quite well.

Here’s a list of key areas (apart from the homepage) that will make sure your digital brand building practice ticks all the right boxes:

Website Pages

Just like your homepage, other important pages have the potential to improve your business dramatically. Among these are the About Us, Blog, and Contact Us page. These are the three most visited pages on a website alongside the homepage:

  • Use your About Us page to answer important questions that a visitor may want answers to. Humanize your brand. Who are you? What do you do? How do you do what you do?
  • Your blog page is where your visitors will hang out the most on your website if you’re publishing quality content while targeting your ideal user. Write blogs that either aim to educate your readers about your business, solve their problems, or provide fresh insights that make their lives better. The main goal is to offer as much value as you can through your content.
  • Lastly, the Contact page is an easy way for your visitors to get in touch with your business. A well-designed contact form should be easier for your audience to engage with as well as make a long-lasting impact. For example, look at how enterprise software company Atlassian does this. With an extremely cleaned and well-organized contact page, they make it easy for visitors to find the specific department they’re looking for and reach out.
atlassian

Your digital brand isn’t just restricted to the website. While your website can be a good starting point, it cannot solely portray an image of your business online. Also, how do you get your ideal users to come to visit you there? Your digital brand strategy needs consistency to thrive. Other aspects of a good digital branding strategy include email marketing, social media, etc. Basically, every single touchpoint that your customer can interact with when it comes to your brand.

Email Marketing

Many online businesses tend to see email marketing solely in terms of sales. However, it is much more than that. It isn’t necessary for your ideal users to be interested in your brand at all times. A compelling email marketing strategy can be the best way to get your brand’s message across, create recall and build strong relationships with your subscribers. Sending out a welcome email as soon as a subscriber signs up for your newsletter can be a great starting point. Informing new subscribers what your business is all about, what can they expect from your future emails, carrying out quick and rewarding surveys, and other such activities as part of your email marketing strategy will make your brand feel much more personal.

Social Media

Think about where your target audience hangs out the most? They can be roaming around on forums, Facebook groups, or scrolling through Instagram. You don’t have to be on every platform, just need to be on the ones where your users are most active. Once you find that out, plan out ways on how you’ll be able to deliver your key values to them using that channel. Videos? Posts? Images? What are they most interested in? Create content that platforms promote organically while keeping in mind the type of audience you want to attract. Make sure you’re not wasting time on channels that aren’t suiting your business needs.

How Digital Branding is impacting businesses?

kpmg

The fact is that no matter which industry you belong to, a percentage of your customers are now online, if not all – especially since the pandemic. As you can see from the statistic above, the internet is a valuable tool for businesses – regardless of how small, big, new, or old. It works as a voice that lets you expand your reach and easily reinforce your brand values.

Shouting and screaming to get your message across online won’t get people to hear you. You’ve got to deliver your message in a way that adds personality to your business so that your customers feel a greater connection with your brand. Your website, social media, and any other digital medium that you work with should do that for you. These digital mediums work as an avenue where you get educate your audience and build affinity among them for your brand while trying to generate as much value as you can for them within your domain.

online experiences
Source: Junto Digital

Your digital presence and searchability build your credibility. Most consumers research online before they head on to make the final purchasing decision. So, your business not appearing on the first searches on say a Google may just end up redirecting a hot lead to a rival.

Still don’t know where to start?

The first and the most obvious step is to enhance and update your professional website. Your website is your identity on the internet. It is where people go when they first hear about you. A website that is tailored for your user can create a lasting first impression. Once you have that in place, your other digital branding ideas can come into play. Connect the dots with other marketing channels and you’ll be well on your way with your own well-distinguished digital brand.

Got questions? Let’s discuss it over some coffee, it’s on us!