How to Create a Strong Brand Through Web Design

Featured article by Jennifer Livingston, Independent Technology Author

Your website is one of the first things that people will see when they research your brand. With this shift in consumer focus towards the internet, entrepreneurs have gained the power to reinforce their brand through their web design.

If you set up your website in the right way, your visitors will walk away knowing exactly what your company is about. This guide will show you how to do just that.

What Is Your Brand?

You have to start with a clearly defined brand in mind.

If you haven’t taken the time to define your brand, you should do so before you invest in a website. Block off a full three hour chunk of time with your team to brainstorm. Your goal is to come up with a simple corporate mantra of four words or less which explains what you do

Even if you’ve been working with your brand for years, it helps to explain it clearly to your web designer. Write down a simple one page brand guide for that person to read before they start working on your website.

Find Your Visual Style

Once you understand what your brand is all about, you need to translate those ideas into a visual aesthetic. Your look can be simplified down to these categories:

1. Fonts

2. Color Schemes

3. Imagery

4. Layout

You want to use a single font for your entire site. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Just pick something that’s easy to read and stick with it.

The color scheme refers to the two or three colors that most of your site is built around. This should relate to your brand. For example, if you look at the halocigs cartomizer page, you can see that they’ve used mostly white and blue colors to evoke the hazy feeling of a cloud of e-cig vapor. Try to do the same for your brand.

Imagery refers to the kinds of photos that you use. Do you want to use stock photography or hire a photographer? Do you need high fidelity, or will a video blog style lo-fi aesthetic work? Your budget plays a big role here.

Lastly, the layout will determine how your visitor browses the site. Do you want a simple one-page website, or a complex web of content? When in doubt, go simple.

Reinforce Your Branding With Content

You should continually update your website after it is built.

The easiest way to do this is to create a prominent blog page on the site. This will be your home for videos, audio, images, and text posts relating to your company.

Don’t Change Your Brand

At first, you will be truly excited to see your new website. With every page designed around the core theme of your brand, it will be easy to see how this can improve your business’s branding efforts.

As times goes on, you may lose this excitement. It’s easy to get restless after a few years and crave something new. Be very careful about changing your brand when this happens.

Remember that branding takes years to build up. Do you want to change it and throw away all of that progress? Whenever you consider changing your colors, your font, or anything else, be careful and consider if it’s really worth it.

When in doubt, don’t change your brand. It is that simple.

Conclusion

You can use your web design to enhance your branding efforts. It’s all about putting in the work at the beginning of the process to set yourself up for success. If you do it right, your website will reinforce your brand for many years to come.