Brand identity isn’t just about a catchy slogan or a marquee product. It’s about marking everything about your business in a way that makes it as easy as possible for people to tell when they’re dealing with you. That’s what makes you memorable in the long run.
And while there are many ways to work on your brand identity, honing your approach to web design is something you can’t afford to ignore, because a solid initial investment can set you up nicely for many years to come (especially as you attract more traffic).
Here’s how you can use the web design process to start laying the groundwork you need to achieve at-a-glance recognisability:
1. Implement a contrasting colour scheme
The best brands in the world pick their colour schemes and stand behind them no matter what they’re doing or what type of content they’re producing. Everything about their digital media is consistent, and every website page uses the same shades and the same contrasts.
If you want your brand to stand out, you need to give it a colour identity. There are plenty of great tools available to help you choose a palette, so run through some options and find something that suits your preferences and should work with your site. Your palette doesn’t need to be bright or bold, but it does need to achieve internal contrast.
Bear in mind that there are a lot of colour associations stuck in people’s minds, whether due to innate connections or cultural programming, so think very carefully before picking neon hues for an organic food company (perhaps consider a calm, earthy green instead).
2. Use a small set of shapes
Shape consistency is huge, not just for building a brand identity but also for making a website easy to use. Every button you use should follow a basic formula in order to be immediately recognisable as a button, and the same goes for every type of link or menu item.
If one button is an oval, another is a square, and yet another is a parallelogram, it will look horribly messy and make it tough for unfamiliar users to know what they should be clicking on. Custom shapes are absolutely fine (they can work really well for quirkier brands), but prioritise internal consistency.
If you like triangles, use triangular buttons, but do so all the time. Don’t mix and match. When an old customer happens across one of your pages, their eye should immediately go to the main CTA, and their brain should immediately identify it as such.
3. Pick a style of imagery
Images are very important online. They break up text, catch the attention in a way that paragraphs never could, and work powerfully through social media to give people insight into what brands care about and prioritise. If you don’t have much of a visual identity, start by thinking about what personality you want to show.
Do you want people to think you’re fun? Knowledgeable? Charitable? Curious? Stylish? The photographs and illustrations you include in your materials will strongly influence how you are viewed, so pick out the image types that will support your preferences.
- If you want to show authority, focus on charts and infographics.
- If you want to show humanity, go with images that display emotion and vulnerability.
- If you want to demonstrate style, invest in clever photography with high production values to put your money where your mouth is.
4. Stick to a broad content structure
Every page is going to have different content, but the overall structure should be fairly well-defined in every situation. Do you start the page with a big image, then go to an introductory paragraph, then go into the main copy? Do you break the text into columns instead? Frame each page around a video? Settle on a certain arrangement and adhere to it.
This doesn’t just go for your website, of course — it applies when you’re writing downloadable resources, using email marketing software, or even creating published materials. The design templates you create for your web design should carry across to everything you do throughout your business, whether external or internal.
If your content is good enough, then harmonious design will make the most of it through earning every new piece the benefit of the doubt. The user will realise (perhaps consciously, perhaps not) that they’re looking at your work, and they’ll give it a chance when they might otherwise have clicked away.
While you put in active work to expand your brand, your web design standards will be having a significant effect on your success in the background, so don’t neglect them. Find the time now to get a solid set of guidelines in place, then follow them consistently, and you’ll see that your brand starts to become a lot clearer.
Kayleigh Alexandra is a content writer for Micro Startups — a site dedicated to spreading the word about startups and small businesses of all shapes and sizes. Visit the blog for the latest marketing insights from top experts and inspiring entrepreneurial stories. Follow us on Twitter @getmicrostarted.
