In today’s business world, a website is a crucial part of any business strategy. It is no longer just a ‘nice to have’, but it is the company’s online presence, and we all know that if you are not online nowadays, you do not exist.

Brand Concept. The meeting at the white office table.

Not only does it put you on the map, but it will probably be the primary direct contact with your customers. This means that besides its purpose of creating leads and drawing sales, your website will also be essential as the central place to show your brand and create an emotional connection with your customers, even before they acquire your services or products. In many cases, this emotional connection will make your prospects become customers.

The secret to creating this emotional connection online is called branding. It entails using visuals, colors, strong written copy, and interface organization to showcase your brand identity, personality, and overall, who you are as a business.

This can be done either in house or through a brand design agency.

Let’s take a look at how to achieve this website branding:

Focus On Your Brand Identity

The first thing you need to focus on is defining your brand identity. This can be done through a few simple steps.

First, you need to think back at the idea that made your business possible. What was it that you wanted to achieve in the first place? What was your purpose? This will give you an idea of what you want to communicate through your brand.

Second, try to imagine where you want your brand to be in the future. What goals and aims are you setting for your brand? Knowing this will help you develop a tone for your brand. It gives your brand a vision statement to keep moving forward.

Third, check the competition. Knowing what other brands that offer a similar product or service are doing can give you some ideas into what other brands are doing to reach their target audience. However, remember that although it can serve you as a compass, you should not aim to copy what others are doing but to bring a new, fresh and unique idea to the field.

Fourth, focus on building a brand identity, not just a fancy logo. The logo used to be the brand identity, but nowadays, focusing on just the logo is not good enough. You have to focus on colors, visuals, voice, traits, and behaviors representing your brand and can be recognized in your services, products, packaging, and website. It’s also important to note that it should be consistent across platforms and settings to represent your brand identity.

There are five main types of brand identities. While there’s some variation and overlap, the following can help you have a starting idea:

• Competence: being intelligent, professional, and reliable;
• Ruggedness: being irreverent, outdoorsy, and challenging;
• Sophistication: being charming, prestigious, and refined;
• Excitement: being daring, imaginative, and playful;
• Sincerity: being honest, warm, and wholesome.

According to top web designers, your brand identity should be the starting point for your choice of visuals, colors, and text when building your website. Now let’s look at the specific items to create branded visuals and written content for your website.

Your Logo

The logo is the face of your brand. It is the most recognizable aspect of it, creating an immediate emotional effect on your customers and the one that will help determine your overall website aesthetic style.

You want your logo to communicate your company’s mission, values, and an idea of the industry you are in or the product or service you offer. For this, you are focusing on what type of icons, typography, and colors you want to use to transmit all these messages.

Besides all this, it’s essential, especially nowadays, to try and focus on minimalistic and straightforward designs. In the past, logos were complicated; too many colors and words were in them. However, it is now known that the more minimalistic a logo is, the more recognizable and understandable it is for people.

The logo should be evident on your website’s homepage, ideally placed in the top left-hand corner.

Your Color Pattern

The colors that you choose for your logo will typically be the ones that will be your brand identity colors, and as such, will be the ones on your website.

Color psychology can give you a well-researched idea of linking emotions and colors better together to transmit your brand identity. For example, red and yellow are associated with fast-food chains because they make people hungrier than colder colors like blue or green. Black and white come across as sophisticated and timeless. Green and black in food represent a healthier, organic, or gourmet option, and so on. Colors are essential, so choosing wisely is paramount.

When combining your color pallet on your website, you should think of things like visibility and professionalism. In some cases, it is good to use a primarily white and black palette, and only for specific objects or headers use your brand colors.

Your Graphics and Images

Your brand identity should also be noticed on your images, graphs, and illustrations. Preferably take your pictures, or create your graphics and infographics to work with your color palette and own personal style.

Your Website Layout

The layout of your website is a subtler way to show what is essential for your brand. For example, if you have a photography business it is better to choose a layout that showcases large, good-quality pictures instead of having a website full of text. Or, if you are a copywriting company, it should have more text than visuals because that’s what you care about.

Regardless of the colors and visuals you are using; you should always make it easy for customers to navigate. A straightforward navigation bar will help them to do that. Additionally, making it look clean without contrasting colors and buttons or windows is better to support your customer feeling comfortable and want to stay longer on the page.

Your Tagline

Although having a tagline is not an essential part of brand identity, it is a clever way of communicating a little extra about you while making you even more memorable and recognizable to your customers. A very known example of this is Nike’s “Just do it” tagline, or McDonald’s “I’m loving it” or Apple’s “Think different”. They all give the brand identity a little more depth and help us recognize their mission and values quicker.

The placement of your tagline on your website will depend on if you want it as part of your logo, in which case it will be everywhere your logo is. Or if it is just a phrase to place on your home page or your About section.

Your Brand Story

The brand story is a straightforward, concise narrative that lets you show your brand is not just a business to make a profit (which it also is, but to connect emotionally with your customers, you need to offer more than that). It is a way to show where the brand comes from, its origins, people involved, plans, and why it wants to achieve what it wants.

A great place to post your brand story is on your About page on your website, but it is also a good starting point to share other content ideas, especially on social media.

Your Web Copy

Copywriting Concept. Closeup of Landing Page on Mobile Computer Screen in Modern Conference Room. Toned. Blurred Image. 3D Render.

All your website copy should be consistent with your brand identity, whether a long blog post or the tiny subtitles and microcopy available on your site. They all matter, and they will all provoke a certain feel in your customer.

Think about the different perceptions each of these two examples will create on your customer: “Get it free now” and “Sign up today (for free)”. One sounds more direct; the other says gentler and even friendlier. Non is wrong or right per se, but they will be once you consider your brand identity.

Conclusion

Branding your business website is crucial for engaging with your prospects and customers by creating a solid emotional connection with your brand through visuals, colors, text, and more. It is now even more critical to stand out among the crowd in this hyper-online world. To succeed in this complex endeavor, it’s best to trust this task to a reputed branding agency that has all the needed human and technological resources to accomplish it.