You have a great business and it grows every day. You understand the necessity of building a brand strategy. But from what to start? How to build a strong brand and increase brand awareness? How to generate new clients and reduce expenses on advertising?
Everyone uses the Internet to find information about goods and services. First that your customer sees is your website with a particular design that influence on brand awareness. Stanford University researchers say that 46% of customers form their opinion based on user interface (UI) and its appearance. If the design is bad it causes to customer’s distrust and user will leave the site. If your site has low conversion you should think about re-branding and a new website strategy. Cutting-edge web design can attract new customers and increase the conversion of your site from 20% to 100% comparing with old design.
It’s very important to get out your offer to the audience in the right way. Make your customers’ life easier and solve their problems by giving them necessary information.
Here are some branding tips that can help to improve brand perception through web design:
1. Emotions and colors. Think about your company brand, your product and customers emotions you want to provoke. For example, black color is associated with luxury. Bright colors as pink or orange mean youth and energy. Make a research what kind of color is associated with your product or service. Analyze your customers and their color preferences. The right colors will help customers to associate your brand with them. Thomas Sanocki and Noah Sulman made an experiment in 2011. Its purpose was to explore color relations that increase the capacity of visual short-term memory.
So how colors affect us according to this theory?
- People used to remember harmonious (with similar colors) patterns;
- People remember better patterns with 3 or fewer colors. Reduce colors on complex content;
- The color contrast between visual info and backdrop may increase our ability to concentrate on visual elements.
All these tips we used in developing web design below and brought us not only a satisfied customer but an Awwwards.
People like people: real photos, true stories, and results. The market is over-saturated and customers are selective if you want to be chosen you should be opened. According to statistics 23% of customers more likely to contact with company who shows their employees’ on the website. There is a system “friend-or-foe” in psychology. Display your customers pictures with emotions and appearance that they could identify your company’s brand as a friend. Give them relevant content. Show them that your company the same as they are.
2. Simplicity. Nowadays, websites are becoming more featured and interactive, which makes them more complicated. The web design of your site should simple and clear. Unnecessary trimming can irritate or even alienate your potential customers. That’s why a required component of a successful web design that is often neglected is its usability.
According to Jakob Nielsen, a leading expert on web usability, it consists of five components as shown in the following diagram:
Use negative space (blank space) between big and small elements of a website. It includes blank space between letters, lines, and design elements. The negative space focuses on customers’ attention on the main and helps to bring them particular information.
How to use the negative space to manipulate customer’s attention:
- using small font make more space between the letters;
- use 1,5 pts;
- large text blocks divide into smaller pieces for better perception;
- use wide indents between large site elements.
Also, use heat maps of attention distribution and place site elements in the red areas. These areas were looked through much more times than any other.
The amount of mobile users is growing every minute so you should work under developing the mobile design of your site. Check if it’s comfortable to tap a menu or any other bottom by big finger. Does it display correctly on mobile devices?
3. Consistency. How to make people remember your brand? The most important component of branding and web design is logo. It has to be simple but memorable. There is a test. Show to a small group your logo then ask them to describe it or even draw. If it’s hard to do then you should work further under your logo until it will be easy to remember. Showing your logo prominently on your site – in your header and footer. You want your customers to identify with it. Visual branding doesn’t end with your logo, however. You should use the same colors, graphic elements, and personality throughout your website. After all, you can create a stated image of your brand in the customer’s mind.
Let’s see case how Wrike company increase conversion up to 1,9 times through changing their web design strategy. Wrike is a versatile service for managing projects and the aim of new web design was to focus on the functionality needed for their customers without spare information.
So they accurately defined five customers’ portraits and made a personalized page for each. Every page contains useful information for a particular group.
Here is an old view Wrike website:
Here is a good branding websites example:
The new homepage structure is made for customers’ self-identification and further product introduction with aim to solve particular customers’ problems. A typical customer’s path throughout a website:
- homepage;
- typical tasks description and solutions by using Wrike;
- general tour;
- signing up for trial version.
To boost the conversion Sign up bottom is placed at all stages.
4. Showcases you worked with. Such an approach is an accepted practice to show the success of your customers. Evidences and feedback can bring potential customers toward a conversion. They would rather hear from a third side, someone like them, that your offer is worth.
Many factors have to be considered during creating branding and web design but it’s not enough for your company’s success. There has to be a comprehensive approach to transformational projects. For example, you succeeded in re-branding the website. Now you have customers stream but inside the company processes are not ready to manage it. Google sheets won’t help you anymore and you will need to find a better approach. We suggest you update not only the website but Customer relationship management (CRM) and Enterprise resource planning (ERP) approach if you don’t have then integrate it. Why? Because the CRM control the customers’ stream and keep them loyal to your brand. How? It stores all information about customers and the history of relationships with them. All businesses spent a huge amount of money on acquisition and retention customers as you do, right? If you can’t control the stream of incoming calls and requests from the website, email, etc, you may lose some of them. So you will carry a lot of expenses for nothing. Save your money and time integrating CRM system into your company!
What about ERP? With this system, you will be able to collect, store, manage and interpret information from many business activities. ERP allows you to see the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll.
Do you want to learn more about CRM? Check the article CRM, ECM and ERP: How your Business can Leverage from this Tools?
You may use ready systems but it has to be adjusted to your company’s needs. Such adjustments can cost you the same price as developing custom application. A custom app is a better solution that will be adapted to your specific needs with necessary features. Our specialists are always ready to review your business and implement its digital transformation with the help of innovative information technologies that were mentioned above (ERP, CRM, etc.). Business process automation helps to cut the company’s expenses from 15-30% according to our experience, re-branding, and new web design may increase conversion from 20-100%.
