Think about what makes your business stand out. Your products or services? It could be. But your competitors may offer something similar. Perhaps it’s your prices? Again, that’s something your competitors could replicate. The thing that really makes any business stand out is their story. Stories are unique to every business, not only acting as a differentiator, but also helping to form close relationships between the organisation and their customers. Storytelling is everything.
So, how do you tell your story? Through your branding.
Your brand is your platform for sharing your story, telling your customers who you are, and showing them what you value. A strong brand is key, and therefore plays a critical role in the success of any website.
Whether you’re building your business’s first website, or you’re redeveloping the site to connect better with your audience, ensure you’re incorporating your branding right into the core website design.
Defining your brand
Before you begin thinking about how your brand and your website fit together, you need to make sure you have a brand to begin with! If you can’t summarise your story in a single sentence, now is the time to start building your identity and creating a brand that shows off who you really are.
Ask yourself:
- What does my business do?
- What do I want my business to do?
- What does the business value?
- Which sort of businesses/industries/sectors do I want to attract?
- What sets my business apart from the competition?
- What’s my business’ unique selling point?
- What do I want to achieve from launching a website?
- What’s my ultimate business goal?
Use the answers to these questions to develop a set of brand guidelines; a ‘cheat sheet’ that personifies your brand, and ensures everything you do aligns with what your business is all about.
Ultimately, what you should be able to achieve here is the creation of a single, simple message. Just one message that clearly states who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. Once you have this, you can use your website as a platform for sharing this message through your digital branding.
Aesthetic elements
When you hear the word ‘branding’, the first thing that probably comes to mind is aesthetics. And for good reason. Think about when you visit a new website for the first time. What’s the first thing you notice? Text? Buttons? Navigation menus? No. It’s the colours, fonts, and other highly visual elements. These are the parts of a website that naturally stand out over and above everything else.
Every visual element, whether it’s your colours, your fonts, or your logo, should have a purpose. They shouldn’t be chosen simply for the sake of it, but to help you deliver your brand’s unique message.
Take a look at any high-quality website, and notice the colours and fonts they’re using. They’re not random. They’re based on colour psychology and in-depth customer research, ensuring that every visual design element is communicating the right message to anyone that’s visiting the website.
The human brain is excellent at forming associations between things, and we only need to see a colour for a brand to instantly come to mind. Think red and Coca-Cola, for example. Therefore, whatever colours you use on your website should be replicated across any other presence you may have, either physical or digital. When visual branding elements are inconsistent across multiple channels, customers can become confused, and may begin to display distrust in the business.
Other branding features
Branding isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s also about the tone of voice that you use, and the way that your customers – and prospective customers – think about your business. That’s why there’s more to incorporating branding into a website than just adding in the right colours, fonts, and logos.
Two things to think about here are your domain name, and the spirit in which you share your message. When it comes to domain names, for example, your domain should reflect your business, your core product, or your purpose. It should be easy to link your domain with who you are.
When it comes to how you share your message, it’s worth taking a little bit of time to create some customer personas, really getting into the heads of those you’re trying to appeal to. Think about a restaurant, for example. If you’re a cheap fast-food place catering to local students, you don’t want to be sharing your story in a tone of voice that suggests luxury, opulence, and exclusivity, do you?
Use the right tone of voice in everything you do, from creating web copy to writing your micro text.
Make your website ‘yours’
Anyone can build a website. Only you can build your website. By incorporating your unique brand, your message, and your story into your website design, you can ensure that your digital presence is working for you, rather than against you, attracting and engaging the right people. Every time.
