Steady branding can lead to a 23% increase in revenue.
Also, companies with a stronger brand see a 43% drop in hiring costs.
That makes it clear why creating a powerful brand is important for your business.
With the Internet becoming an inseparable part of our lives, the 21st century is seeing the need to shift offline branding to the digital playground.
Creating a powerful digital brand is important to
- Continue your offline legacy
- Attract an audience
- Sustain the audience’s attention
- Stay ahead of your competitors
- Boost your conversion and revenue
And there are five components of an online brand:
- Business website
- Blog
- Social media channels
- SEO
- Email marketing
Today, we will be focusing on your website and attractive web design as a way of building a brand.
Before we discuss how you can build a strong online brand with your website design, let’s see how the two are related.
Digital branding and web design
What comes to mind when you think of Apple?
Innovation.
Luxury.
Sophisticated technology.
That’s the power of branding. One word conjures so many emotions in your mind.
Now imagine if the Apple website was sloppy, slow-loading, blingy, and dated in design?
Your perception of Apple would have taken a hit, right?
That stands true for not just Apple, but your business’s brand too.
Your website is the first point of contact between your business and your audience. And first impressions matter.
Your website’s look and feel need to be in line with how you want customers to perceive your brand. That’s why keeping branding in mind while designing your website is important.
And here’s…
A 5-step process for creating an attractive web design that helps build a powerful digital brand
Step 1. Creating the structure of your website
Before you set out to color your website or populate it with content, create a website structure.
Your website’s structure decides how accessible it will be for your audience and search engines. A clean and well-thought-out structure makes navigation simple. It also enhances your website’s findability as search engines can crawl and index your web pages.
And a website that ranks high in SERPs and is easy to navigate leaves a strong message about the brand.
If you want to position your brand as easily accessible, your website’s structure should also be such. Proper hierarchy and a suitable navigational depth are important.
Step 2. Integrate your brand’s color scheme into your website
Once you have decided on your website’s structure, it is time to color your website using your brand’s color palette.
Start by taking the colors from your logo. Those are the colors that should be prominently used on your site too. You can, of course, pick an accent color and a contrasting color to keep things engaging.
But make sure you have not more than 3 primary colors on your website. And don’t forget to use color psychology to create a desirable brand perception.
Step 3. Site speed, SEO, and responsiveness
Every business wants to be considered trustworthy and dependable, right? And your website speed and SEO play an important role in building that trust.
If your website takes a lot of time to load, people will eventually bounce away. And they’d be logical in assuming that you don’t value your audience’s time.
On the other hand, if your website is not responsive, it would not look appealing on all devices and operating systems. This would distort your brand image for some users.
And without proper search engine optimization, you won’t be found on the web. It takes 5 to 7 interactions for people to start remembering a brand. And if you don’t rank for the relevant keywords, your interactions with your target audience will be limited.
Thus, you need your web design to be responsive, search engine-friendly, and optimized for speed.
Step 4. Showcase your brand message through website content
One of the key elements of brand building is having a clear brand message. And once you have finalized your brand’s message you need to make sure it is repeated and reinstated everywhere. Especially on your website.
Suppose you want to position yourself as a youthful brand. Using modern lingo and a breezy, casual tone is important to put that message across. Your website’s content copy and multimedia assets should reflect your brand’s message.
Step 5. Maintain branding consistency
There are different ways in which you can build a brand for your business. You could go for corporate branding, where you don’t focus on individual products/services but an umbrella brand. For example, Apple. No matter what Apple product we talk about, we feel the same sense of prestige as associated with the parent company.
Another type of branding is product-based branding. Here, there is no need for an umbrella brand image and products have different branding. This can be seen in the case of PepsiCo. While Pepsi – the carbonated soft drink and Quaker – the healthy oats, are both a part of PepsiCo’s portfolio, they have their separate brand and audience.
Read More: The difference between Amateur VS Professional branding
You could also have a personal brand. This is especially suitable for small businesses. You could bank on your personal brand to sell your products/services. Neil Patel’s digital marketing agency, Neil Patel Digital, is a great example of a personal brand. The company attracts and retains customers using the marketing guru’s personal brand image.
Your website should be consistent with the type of branding you have picked for your business.
If you are building a corporate brand, your site should talk less about individual products/services and more about your company in general. For product-based brands, your website’s product pages would be more important. And the website content copy and communication should be kept extremely personal in case you want to build a personal brand.
Steps to take before you start
Branding and web design are interrelated. However, both need specialized expertise. A brand-building expert might not have the relevant skills to design a website from scratch and vice versa. That’s why you need a team of brand identity design experts who can work collectively to help you build a powerful digital brand with attractive web design.
So the first step to take before starting is finding the right team. SeekThem can be the starting and endpoint of your search. The platform can quickly help you find graphic designers, logo designers, and digital designers for brand building. And you can also onboard website and UI/UX designers to continue your branding efforts online.
Start today!
