What is Branding?
If you’re going to see the word “branding” only by itself, its meaning can only seem very simple and easy to understand. Without extensive research, people can just define it as, “the process of making or creating a brand.” But in reality, it’s more than just that. What then, is branding?
Branding is not just a process of creating a brand; it is an important process of communicating a unique selling proposal. This is a way of setting service or product that’s distinctive from the other competitors. The most common techniques of branding incorporate taglines, logos, mascots, and jingles.
Moreover, branding is also the process of providing definition to a particular company, business organization, services, or products through shaping and making a brand in the customer’s mind.
Branding is a tactic created and designed by companies and organizations to help people notice, identify, and experience their main brand.
If a company or organization has good branding strategies, the chances of people choosing their product or services over their competitors become pretty high.
Excellent branding strategies improve a company or organization’s market reputation. However, what’s the main objective of branding?
The objective of this process is to capture loyal clients and retain them. Its goal is also to attract and retain stakeholders by providing them excellent and unique services and products.
Branding is also defined as a promise to the consumers. It’s a statement that you’ll convey on claims that your eCommerce makes.
Why Branding is Important for your eCommerce
Branding gives your eCommerce a massive edge. In the U.S, 46% of small enterprises don’t have their website.
So, think of it – by creating a website and allowing yourself to join the online market, you can already become more dominant than numerous businesses. But aside from this, branding is what will change the story.
To some people, branding is just creating a logo with using free online logo template or a simple webpage. But branding is more than that as it also pertains to the associations and feelings that the customers have towards your company.
If branding is done the correct way, it will undoubtedly give your current and future clients a brighter and clearer idea of what you truly offer and your values. It will also help your clients understand what makes you unique from the rest of the competitor eCommerce brands.
Branding also helps in building your customer’s trust and loyalty. It also gives you a boost in terms of sales and revenue. No wonder your business will make lots of money through the right way of branding.
Another reason why branding is important is that it’s an excellent chance for your business to let your customers know who you truly are and what your business stands for.
Building your Brand Identity – Important Questions You Must Answer
Before we discuss the essential questions you need to know that can help you define your style, let us know what brand identity is and why your eCommerce business needs it.
In simple words, a brand identity is the face of every business. It is how your viewers and customers recognize you.
If your eCommerce business doesn’t have a good brand identity, your audience will have a hard time understanding how your business works. As a result, they won’t try your services or products and they’ll never promote them.
Brand identity is the outgrowth of excellent branding. Under brand identity are:
- Brand personality
- Brand voice
- Brand message
- Brand values
- Visual brand identity
When these five elements are correctly done, an outstanding tone, feel, and look of your eCommerce business will truly be ahead of others.
Now let’s talk about some of the questions you must ask yourself. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you succeed in building your brand identity.
- Who is your target customer?
- What types of problems can you masterfully solve?
- What is your personality?
- What’s your competition?
- What do you think your client feels towards your business strategy?
- What makes you unique from other competitors?
- Why do your customers trust your eCommerce business?
- What’s your brand’s story?
- What are the top 5 things that best describe you?
- If your business is not yet taking off, what do you think is wrong with your current brand identity?
- What other brands do you admire and respect?
- How can you make your brand identity simple and less complicated?
- How are you going to assess your brand reputation?
- What are the most common words and terms that your customers use to describe your eCommerce business?
- How does your logo define your brand?
- How do you connect and communicate with customers?
Logo – Why It Is Important
Your logo isn’t just a silly artwork that describes your business – it’s practically one of the most crucial elements of your visual brand identity.
Your logo is one of the original elements of your visual identity and if it’s done professionally, it can give customers a long-lasting impression. What makes a logo design effective? Check down below:
- Pure originality. Your logo must have some engaging visual components. It must contain unique design elements and eye-catching color combinations. You should hire a logo design professional for obtaining pure originality or you can use FreeLogoCreator.com to make professional logo designs yourself.
- Timelessness and memorability. Make sure that the logo still looks great even after a long time. Don’t rely on the most trending design ideas. Also, your logo must leave a lasting recall and impression on the customer’s mind.
- Flexibility and relevance. The logo should look good and scale well from a small thumbnail to larger visual representations. It must also be translated to either digital or printed form. Plus, your logo must fully represent your services or products.
Typography is More than just Letters and Style
Well-created typography promulgates feelings of fun, humor, energy, etc. We always connect adjectives and emotions with fonts. These are the usual fonts and their connected adjectives:
- Serif fonts: Times New Roman, Georgia, Garamond – Trustworthy, Respectable, Traditional, Well-founded
- Slab serif fonts: Rockwell, Museo, and Courier – Strong, Innovative, Advanced, Bold
- Modern fonts: Eurostyle, Matchbook, and Politica – Chic, Unique, Sophisticated
- Script fonts: Lucida, Brush Script, and Lobster – Classic, Imaginative, Amiable
- Sans Serif fonts: Arial, Verdana, and Helvetica – Neat, Constant, Modernized
Once you’ve selected the best typography, no wonder you can deliver the correct message to your prospective clients.
Color Palette for your Brand – The Meaning of Colors in Branding
Colors can also be connected with emotions and adjectives. With the correct color combinations, you can deliver your business’s vision and mission truly well. The usual definitions of every color in branding are stated below:
- Purple – spirituality, authority, prosperity
- Black – fashion, power, drama
- White – clarity, cleanliness, newness
- Orange – boldness, success, uniqueness
- Red – vitality, firmness, enthusiasm
- Pink – empathy, sportiveness, femininity
- Blue – loyalty, trust, honesty, peace, intellect
- Green – richness, cleanliness, eco-friendliness
- Yellow – joy, enthusiasm, cleverness
The Audience Understands your Business through Brand Voice
Your brand voice is important in communicating with customers. It must sound pertinent to your client’s tone, personality, and background. To be effective in this aspect, you can use your customers as motivation and inspiration.
If they sound academic, then you must also sound academic. If you think they’re quite familiar with statistics and studies, they like telling stories, or they’re quite straightforward, then act and sound like you’re just like them.
With the correct usage of brand voice, you can easily build lasting relationships and connections with your target audience.
How You Can Make your eCommerce Website Design Exceptional
- Keep your design simple yet engaging
Just like the famous saying, “Simplicity is beauty.” Yes, the secret to a good eCommerce design is by making it simple but engaging and powerful. Keep it clean, clear, and customer-friendly.
- Try to put yourself in your audience’s shoes
When designing your website, act like you’re a web visitor. Ask yourself, “If I’m the customer, will I be interested in trying their product with this website?”. In that way, you’ll know if your web design is good enough to catch your audience’s attention.
Ascertain that your website is easy to navigate, user-friendly, convenient, and quick-loading. Make the checkout process very simple and easy to understand. Make sure that with your design, you’ll satisfy your customer’s needs and wants.
- Use eye-catching and eye-pleasing color combinations
The colors you’ll choose in designing your website have a huge impact. Just like what we’ve discussed earlier, you can deliver the mission of your business through the right color combinations. You will find many web design tools that can help you create mockups, frameworks, producing quick ideas, refining the interface, and more. Many downloads are available on all web design elements, including VR, animations, colors, and typography.
If you are interested in making your eCommerce business transform, remember to use colors correctly.
- Make sure to use high-quality images
One of the secrets in having an excellent-grade website is by putting high-quality images. In the world of eCommerce, no one would buy a product if it’s unseen. If you want your audience to purchase your products, they should see them through high-definition pictures.
- Create easy-to-scan content
No one’s going to read your content if it’s crazy long. If you’re selling products or offering services, ascertain that your descriptions are quite readable. Most of the readers nowadays don’t read the whole content; they just read the key information.
- Make your web design look professional and legitimate
A professionally designed website will truly build customer trust. To make your website look professional, make sure that you don’t have any typographical errors. Your colors, fonts, and other designs must be consistent on every page.
- Ascertain that your website is responsive and the checkout process is fast
To keep your customers from purchasing products and services from your site, make sure that your website is responsive. It should be accessible not only with computers but also with mobile devices and tablets. Each page must not be complicated and it should be easily navigated.
Allow your buyers to either register to your website or check out only as a guest. Ascertain that the checkout process is clear and easy to understand. Once a purchase is done, make sure that your customers land on a confirmation page so they’ll know that the process is being completed.
What’s the Role of Packaging Design in your eCommerce Business?
Your packaging design is very crucial as well. Aside from the actual quality of your product, its packaging is also what makes it worth the purchase. Do you think it would be a great idea to buy an iPhone that’s inside a crumpled paper with random tapes on it? No!
The point is, how your product is packaged is important to keep your business from running successfully. Make sure that your packaging is professionally designed and handled with maximum care. You can also design your packaging to improve customer experience with custom packaging, or the use of dynamic QR codes on packaging to enable connected online experiences.
Packaging is the very first physical impression that every customer would see and hold in actuality. Yes, in reality, good packaging means increased sales and revenue!
Create Connections with Business Cards
In an ultra-technological world, business cards are normally overlooked. But, business cards never get old. It delivers preparedness and professionalism. The business card represents your business brand. It usually contains your name, email, number, website, etc.
However, it’s more than just those details. The business card is the very first unveiling of the total image of your company. This isn’t just a simple info card; the personality and nature of your company reflect with this card.
Adding another dimension, having a ready-to-go business card shows proper and strategic planning. Once a customer receives your card, a clear connection is automatically made. So, your business card must look neat, detailed, and eye-pleasing.
Be Consistent in Branding
Consistent branding results in excellent brand recognition. What do you think makes a company dominant? By being easily recognizable by the audience. Yes, your eCommerce business should stand out among others – brand consistency is the key to that.
Brand consistency helps you create a powerful connection between your brand messages, brand values, and visual components. It also helps in strengthening brand reputation, capturing positive emotions, building loyalty and trust, and brand-differentiating.
People will easily recall you if you’re active in different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
To make your eCommerce business page visually captivating and engaging, you can add some branded marketing materials or graphic templates to every post on your social media platforms. Doing this will also help increase the reach of your posts and advertisements.
Since almost everybody is looking for products and services on social media, no doubt your business will take off and your social media presence will become more dominant.
Upbuilding and enhancing your social media presence is one of the most innovative and effective ways in brand consistency.
Author Bio:
This guest post was written by Francis Dimaano. Francis is a freelance writer and an Info-Tech graduate student. He works in the comfort of his home. When he’s not writing, Francis spends time reading books, traveling around his country, volunteering, and feeding street children.
