Your business is defined by your brand. Everything associated with your business needs to be based around effective branding, and that includes your website.
Nearly 40% of users who visit your site will abandon it if it’s unattractive. Unless you want your business to fail, your brand and your website need to work—together.
That’s why it’s so important to develop your site around smart web design. If you want your branding and identity to make an impression on the web, your design has to work.
Here’s how you can use smart web design to build the identity and brand of your company.
Build a Consistent Design
This may be an obvious statement, but it’s also the most important. The most important element to the art of website design is to build a consistent design.
When you visit Amazon or Google, you know exactly what to expect. Navigating the site is clear and obvious, and the branding is consistent throughout.
That’s the type of design you need if you want your branding to work. Everything from your text to imagery needs to match to the scene you’re setting with your website.
Choose Your Color Scheme
Choosing a color scheme is a great way to start branding a website. You’ll want it to fit in with your other branding, like your business logo.
What message do you want your scheme to portray—is it serious or fun? Light or dark?
If you don’t have a logo yet, this is branding 101, so start asking the right questions to help you decide what your logo will mean to your brand. From here, choose the colors that will define your identity.
Those colors will shape your website branding. They’ll be the colors that immediately help users identify with your message and purpose.
Make Your Tone Clear
Every website you come across has its own tone or style they present. An academic site might be serious, while a site for children might be light and fun.
Choose your tone. This will play a part in building your identity and, from there, shaping your audience. If you’re targeting a younger crowd, you’ll want a more modern design than if you’re targeting people who are older.
By building a personality around your website branding, you’re humanizing your brand and your website. This’ll make it easier for users to connect with you and, potentially, become loyal customers.
Build for Your Customers
It’s all well and good building a website that looks fancy, but if it doesn’t engage with your customers, what’s the point?
You need a design that’s built for your customers. That means making it accessible, easy to navigate, and capable of loading well on any type of devices.
It needs to load quickly, too. Don’t overload with images, text, or UI features like sign-up forms. If your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds, over half of your potential audience will go elsewhere.
Impressions count, especially first impressions. If you want your first impression on new users to go well, you want a website that’s built with these elements in mind.
Make Your Branding and Identity Clear
It’s not enough to make a website that looks good. Your website is the extension of your business. It may even be your business if it’s based online.
That’s why your branding and identity need to be obvious for your users. It needs to stand out and make an impression, with obvious color and tone in your content. It needs to be built to satisfy the needs of your customers.
Your website, your brand, and your business as a whole will skyrocket to even greater success if you build your site with these elements in mind.
If you need help building your site, look at our web design services today.
