Branding is the simple key to marketing for online businesses. This has been a marketing buzzword for as long as one can remember. It has been the cause of much design time spent on CI or corporate identity whether the logo, stationery, mission statement and rewritten mission statements.
Included in the corporate identity are such elements as theme songs and jingles. It has also been the role of endless numbers of focus groups to evaluate and guide the development of the elements of CI.
As much as the visual elements are important, branding is simpler than this. Branding is all about letting customers know who you are, what you do and how you do it. It also helps if your customer comes away believing that you are better than your competitors.
For your online business you need to create an identity and define your brand right at the beginning. When your customers arrive on your site they should immediately be able to see what you are offering and why they should want to become engaged with you.
Many websites bombard you with flashy graphics and catchy slogans but don’t actually explain to you the visitor what they are about and what they might be offering to you the potential customer. This is not good for your business. You need to spell out what your message is so there are no misunderstandings.
A potential customer does not know what you and your business are about. It is therefore important to explain clearly what you are offering to them. It is especially important to state what benefits you are offering. The customer should be able to see what is in it for them should they wish to interact with your business.
Once you have established that your customer could benefit from your service then you are able to provide all other information and even use those flashy graphics and fancy logo to good effect.
Approach your website design with a view that you would like your visitors or the users of your site to become fans. This will make it easier to entice them back for more visits, encourage them to purchase your products or service and subscribe to your newsletters.
More than that fans will rave about you, encourage you in your business, look forward to receiving news from you and find out what you are working on professionally. They will also spread the word and encourage others to join.
Even though you may love your graphics and animations that take ten minutes to load, the word is more important on the Internet. What matters more are the actual words you use. The most important proof of this is that the search engines will deliver search results according to keywords being searched for by potential customers.
Search engines are not as yet focused that much towards searching for those cool flash animations although there is some progress in this field. The words are still the key to getting visitors to your site.
For your fan numbers to increase you need to provide interesting and brand-related content. When presenting that content use a conversational tone which seems to work the best. Write your content as if you a talking to somebody. Think of what you prefer yourself. You would prefer it if somebody spoke to you like a real person rather than present something in a bullet points list.
Words are king on the Internet. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend some effort on your design elements. However, your creative elements should purely support your brand and content rather than dominate the page and should support your message.
Branding your business on the Internet is important. It should be part of your message of letting people know what you do, how you do it and who you are.
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I agree with you about the importance of branding. When I started blogging seriously I decided I wanted a clean uncluttered design and would have my business cards made with the same design. That way when I give them out, they instantly recognise my blog when they go on the net.
Patricia Perth Australia
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Patricia
That is a good approach – have everything looking the same…it will help people remember the brand.
Andrew
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