Branded Website: What is it and does it really matter?
Do you need a branded website? Of course. But what does that really mean?
The term ‘branding’ and ‘brand’ get thrown around a lot these days. Let’s take a minute to clarify what a brand is and how it needs to express itself on your site.
What is branding?
Ask 10 different branding experts to define the term ‘brand‘ and you’re likely to get 10 different answers.
One of my favourites comes from Marty Neumeier who wrote The Brand Gap:
“A brand is a persons gut feeling product, service or company”
He goes on to explain that it’s a gut feeling because humans are emotional, intuitive beings, despite our illusion that we are rational creatures who make analytical decisions based on logic.
Branding is not just a logo and visuals, this is what is often called a corporate identity. Branding involves the overall experience your client or customer has at every touchpoint of your business.
This includes think like your email exchanges, what social media channels your active on, your copy and tone, your vibe and attitude on a zoom call, the production value of your content, your key messaging, and of course their level of satisfaction with the service they received.
All of it.
How does branding for websites work?
The three main components that do all the work of communicating your brand on your website are copy, visuals and experience.
1. Your Website Copy
You can write your own copy (website text), but it really helps to work with a copywriter.
A good copywriter can help you identify your key messages and create compelling copy that converts.
Once you have good copy, it need to be arranged and highlighted in a way that supports your brand. What makes for good headlines and sub headlines?
What tone should be used for the body copy and call to action buttons? Serious? fun? Irreverent?
Lastly, how is your website copy organized? Is it one long paragraph after another, or is it broken down into short, digestible chunks.
Sometimes long text is appropriate, for example on scientific or academic websites. Still whether you have short or lengthy text on your website, it needs to be organized in a way that is legible and easy to engage with.
My Launch and Thrive Biz Kit is a self-paced course that takes guides you from niche and positioning to website launch (includes a template) and marketing. The kit also includes an end-to-end blitz branding course as well as access to monthly, live office hours for real-time help from an expert (me!).
2. Visual Design
The famous designer Paul Rand said:
“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand”
And it’s true.
Here’s a list of visual elements that communicate your brand:
Layout - is it cluttered or clear? Are call to actions easy to find?
Photography - is it professional, sharp, what imagery are you sharing? Does it convey the vibe you’re after. In other words, is on brand?
Color - Your color selection has a big impact on how your website expresses your brand. Is it all muted greens and pinks? What I call the ‘Farrow and Ball’ effect, or is it big on white space?
Typography - Does your website work with minimalistic sans serif fonts, expressive scripts or serif fonts or a mix of the two. Are the fonts you’re using legible? Don’t underestimate the power of typography and font pairing.
3. Website User Experience
A website experience is what happens when someone tries to engage with your website. Technical and structural aspects impact the user experience of your website. These include:
Speed - Is your website fast or slow?
Links - Are there are a lot of broken links? If a link doesn’t work what does a 404 error page look like (the page that says ‘oops, wrong page’)
Information design - Is key information easy or difficult to find on your website?
Confirmation and feedback - If a user fills out a form what kind of confirmation do they get afterwards?
These user experience factors are important. Your website experience communicates important brand messages. Messages like: This person is thorough (or sloppy). This person or company is reliable (or not). This business has it together (or doesn’t)
Putting it all together
As a web designer, I think of myself as a kind of cook: I take all of these brand ‘ingredients’ and put them together to make a delicious dish; your website.
The finished result should align to your brand.
I’d love to tell you there is some quantifiable way to measure if your website ends up being on brand or not, but lots of time it’s a feeling.
It’s similar to what Buckminster Fuller said about beauty:
“Whenever I’m working on a problem I don’t think about beauty, but if in the end it is not beautiful, I know it is wrong”
Do you need a full brand exploration before launching a website?
In a perfect world, maybe.
My philosophy is if you’re just getting started and money and time is limited, you don’t need to, and in fact it probably doesn’t make sense to go nuts with a huge brand development project.
Here’s a secret: your brand will evolve, especially as you gain more experience. Part of getting a website launched and out into the world is figuring out what your brand is all about.
It’s usually not the case that you can just sit down and pull your brand out of your brain.
It’s not linear. You need to just get started, and get ‘out there’. Getting out there and bumping up against the world is the process that will bring you clarity on your brand.
On the other hand, If you’ve run your business for awhile and it’s sustainable (I’ve heard people say this is anywhere from earning a minimum of 60-100k a year), it may be time to invest in a full brand development project.