Is Your Website Really Projecting Your Brand?
A visually attractive website will definitely score you points with prospects, but having all the design bells and whistles isn’t enough to make your site successful. You need a website that not only looks great but elevates and reinforces your business’ brand identity.
Your website is likely the first touch-point prospects have with your business. It must be in sync with your brand if you want to make a lasting impression. To get started, here are a few simple ways to start incorporating your brand identity into your web design.
Prominence of your logo
It goes without saying — your logo needs to be on your website. While it doesn’t need to be “in your face,” it should appear in a prominent position and be easy to read/identify. Standard practice these days is to place it near the upper left portion of the page, but it also looks nice right above the navigation bar or centered with navigation links on either side. The location is flexible; what more important is size and readability. Make sure that your logo can be easily identified and read. It should be the second or third thing someone notices when visiting your website.
And last – QUALITY! Nothing looks worse than a low resolution, blurry logo. This is all about first impressions, so make sure your logo is crisp and clean. If you can’t get your hands on a high resolution version, it’s worth the money to pay a graphic designer to recreate your logo and provide you with a high-quality version – make sure you ask your designer for the source files from Illustrator (.ai, .eps), Photoshop (.psd) or similar program.
Pro Tip: Link the logo to the home page. That way users can navigate back from any page on the site with ease.
Incorporate your brand colors
Remember all that time you spent choosing just the right colors to represent your business? Well, the colors on your website should match or at least complement them. And when we say “incorporate” your brand colors, we mean “use subtle hints of color to strategically reinforce brand identity.” You don’t need your website to scream “BLUE!” simply because that color features heavily in your logo.
Pro Tip: The navigation bar, heading text, link hovers and calls-to-action are perfect places to use your brand colors. They give just the right pop of color to your page without overwhelming the user.
Choose the right font pairings
Typography is crucial to a website’s success, and it all starts with which fonts you choose. This isn’t your college term paper, Times New Roman is not required … unless of course you think that font most accurately represents your brand, then by all means use Times New Roman. What I’m saying is, be creative. Every font has its own personality, and your website should use the one(s) that match the personality of your brand. Usually you’ll pick two fonts — one for headings and another for body copy. If you feel strongly about just using a single font, create contrast for your headings by styling them in a different weight (e.g. bold) or typing them in all caps.
Pro Tip: Not sure if the fonts you like really go together? Fontpair.co is a great resource. It provides suggestions for how to pair Google Fonts and can give you a good idea of what makes a great font pair.
Fill it with killer content
Brand voice is a major selling point for your business. The way you talk about your business and engage with customers says a lot about who you are and what kind of experience someone should expect when working with you. Creating amazing content for your site, from your about page to hero images and blog posts, will let your brand voice shine and reinforce the image you’ve built for your business.
Pro Tip: One of the easiest ways to show off your personality and establish trust with consumers is to start a blog. And it works double time for you by giving you a nice SEO boost.
Be consistent
At the end of the day, what really matters in branding is that you’re consistent. The whole point of branding is to make your business memorable, and no one is going to remember you if you keep changing things (or rarely see you). Each element of your website should come together to present a uniform image. If it doesn’t, then it’s back to the drawing board for you.
Need help marrying your brand and your website? The marketing pros at Higgins Marketing Group have a great eye for design and will work with you to build a site that truly supports your goals. Contact us today to set up a consultation and get started on your beautifully branded website.
