How to Build Your Brand through Web Design If you want to create excitement when people see your brand, choose your colours right
By Sam Sayer
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A successful brand can get you customers, and enable you to keep them at the same time. Also, by keeping your buyers satisfied with your products or services, they will remain loyal. The first thing you should do, however, is to tell them what your brand is all about. You can also build your brand through web design.
Here are several tips on how web design can help build a brand suitable for your audience.
Choose the right color
Colors are important because they can evoke people's emotions and their subconscious. For example, what comes to mind when you see the color green? You are probably thinking of the environment or your health. Seeing it may also keep you calm. For this reason, many hospital walls are now painted with pale green.
Meanwhile, black is a serious color since it can represent luxury. Think of brands like Louis Vuitton or Rolex watches. Orange, however, is less suitable for serious brands. When people see this color, they see it bursting with youthful energy.
If you want to build excitement or interest when people see your brand, find out which colors can do that. You should also consider that various cultures have different interpretations of the same colors. If you're catering to an international market, use only colors that are universally favored if possible.
Inject some personality
People like brands that have human-like attributions because it helps them identify with it. Psychologists call it anthropomorphism.
A fine example of this is Twitter with its little blue bird. Once people see this winged mascot, they think of Twitter. It's easy to recall a brand that has some human-like familiarity.
Stir your audience's feelings
If they see your brand, what emotions do you want them to experience? Using the latest designs isn't going to cut it anymore. To make your brand popular, associate it with pleasant emotions and vibes that you can include in the web design.
With our site, we used the color orange and short video clips to showcase our brand as a creative web design agency. Upon landing on the page, the images aim to bring positive feelings to the audience.
Keep the design consistent
Brands are successful because people care and remember them. So how do you make your brand memorable? The answer is consistency.
This means you need to be consistent in your web design. In every page, use the same colors, formatting, graphics, personality, and emotions. People should see a uniform image throughout your website.
This will also make your website perform better. Since you're reusing content such as graphics, your site will load faster. If someone has visited the site before, your images are easily displayed from the browser's cache. For example, if you're using the same navigation bar in all web pages, the browser only needs to download the code once.
Display your logo properly
You can get creative with your logo design but there's only one place where it should be located. Always put your logo on the upper left corner of the website because that's where most people will look for it. You should also link the logo's image to the home page.
Logo size is also important. So make sure that the logo is big enough to get noticed immediately by your visitors.
Present value proposition
First-time visitors will have several questions upon landing on your site. What products or services are you offering? Can it provide solutions to their problems? This is where your value proposition comes in.
A value proposition is a short statement that visitors can easily see on your page. It should be placed high up on the page just after the logo and menu.
You can only afford yourself a few words to tell what benefits the visitors will get from your site. So make sure the value proposition is:
- Clear
- Short
- Concise
- Answer the question what and why
Use the appropriate voice
The language or tone you're going to use should support the brand's personality and emotions. If your audience is millennials, the tone could be informal. If you're catering to stock market investors, a formal tone is more appropriate.
If you're going to say the same message to different audiences just remember this:
You don't change what you say but change how you say it.
For example, you can use both formal and informal words to convey the same meaning. In other words, you need to use a tone that your audience will respond to.
Here is a simple example on how you can define what a car is in two different tones:
Layman's version: It's a metal thing that lets you travel to faraway places.
Scientific version: It's a machine that uses energy in the form of fuel that gets converted to mechanical energy to move the wheels and gears.
By using different tones, you can spread your brand's message to a correct audience.
Make your brand unique
Using all these elements is not enough. To truly set your brand apart from the rest, you have to make it unique.
The colors, personality or voice doesn't matter if your website looks the same as your competitors. How could prospective buyers distinguish? Yes, it will take a bit of effort to create a brand that's different from the others. That hard work, however, will pay off since your visitors will likely remember you. There's also a greater chance that they will come back again once they are satisfied with your products or services.
Creating a brand makes sense even for small businesses as well as personal websites and blogs. In the face of fierce competition, having a good brand will help you get noticed. So in designing a website, these tips will help your brand get a head start from your competitors.