9 Essential website branding tips for a strong online presence

Why consistent website branding is important

• Recognition and memorability: By creating a consistent visual identity across their website, customers can easily recognize and remember your client’s brand.
• Professionalism and trust: Using consistent website design and branding helps demonstrates a sense of professionalism and attention to detail, fostering trust and credibility with customers.
• Brand consistency across channels: Establishing a unified brand identity across all marketing channels, such as social media profiles, print materials, and offline advertisements, can help create a cohesive brand experience for your client’customers.
• Differentiation and competitive advantage: Having a consistent website branding strategy helps businesses create a distinct and recognizable presence in the market, giving them an edge over their competitors.
• Enhanced customer experience: A consistent brand identity across your client's website lets customers easily recognize and interact with the site, leading to an enhanced overall user experience.

Guidelines to understand your client’s website branding

Knowing your client’s brand and their values will enable you to design and build a website that resonates with their target audience and reflects positively upon the brand itself.

Gathering brand information

A thorough understanding of a brand’s personality, values, and mission is essential for any business owner or website owner looking to maximize their online presence. Here are some actionable steps and professional tips on how you can gather the necessary information:

• Research the brand’s history: Take a look at how the brand got its start and learn about any major milestones or changes in ownership over time.
• Analyze the branding of competitors: Compare how other companies within the same industry have branded themselves. Noting similarities and differences can help you create a unique identity for your client’s website.
• Review your current website: Your company website is an excellent resource for discovering what kind of brand identity you want to create. Look at your current logo, color scheme and overall design; does it reflect the message you want to communicate? Also, review any collateral materials such as brochures and flyers—how do they contribute to reinforcing your brand message?
• Research competitors’ websites: Analyzing competitor websites is an excellent way to understand what type of branding and messaging works well in your industry and which aesthetic appeals more to customers.
• Utilize customer feedback: Platforms like Twitter and Facebook are excellent sources of customer opinion on various brands; these opinions provide valuable insight into what customers like or dislike about a particular brand. You can also use review websites like Yelp or Trip Advisor.
• Stay up to date with changes in branding: You must frequently check for branding updates to stay up-to-date with your client’s requirements. Marking relevant changes will allow you to adjust your strategy accordingly and create content that effectively reflects the updated identity of the company’s brand image.

Personality & Values

Your clients’ personality contributes to their brand’s reputation, credibility, and appeal. To better understand your client’s personality, begin by analyzing the visuals associated with their brand.

• Core messaging on other platforms: Research which platforms they use to communicate with their customers to get insight into how precisely they tailor their messages to their different audiences.
• Public speaking engagements: Look for additional insights into how they present themselves in the public eye—what values are important to them? What kind of narrative do they have when talking about the company?
• Products and services: To gain insight into what matters most to your client, research their company website and any collateral materials such as brochures and flyers.
• Slogans: Look out for key phrases or slogans that communicate their core values; once you’ve identified these, you may want to look into how they promote them through various activities or events.
• Past marketing campaigns: You can also look at what kind of campaigns and initiatives are being run by the brand—this will give you an idea of what they believe in and prioritize as a company.
• Public relations: Review press releases, interviews, and articles written about them; this will help give you further context on why these values are so vital to them.

Analyzing their target audience/positioning from competitors

To gain an insight into the target audience of your client’s brand, look at the demographics and interests of their current customer base and any other brands they might be competing against in the market. Review any interviews or articles about them to understand better who they consider their ideal customers. Pay attention to what customers appreciate about the brand to get valuable insight into their desired positioning.

Researching the competition and seeing how they are positioned can help you pinpoint what makes your client stand out and what values or messages should be emphasized when crafting content.

List of 9 essential website branding tips for clients

An effective website is vital for any brand to reach potential customers, make a great first impression, and drive actual business results. To help you create and build a website that checks all these boxes, we're going to cover nine essential website branding tips that will get you off on the right foot:

1. Choosing the right color palette

Choosing the right color palette is essential for creating an effective website branding strategy, as it will set the tone for the entire website and evoke certain emotions from viewers. To ensure you make the best decisions when selecting colors, consider incorporating your client’s logo into your color scheme to establish their identity further online.

Here are some steps you can take when researching the right color palette for your client’s brand:

• Research your client’s competitors: Analyze the websites and branding of competitors in the same industry. Note the colors they use and how they evoke certain emotions or associations. This research will help you differentiate the client's website while staying relevant to their industry.
• Consider the psychology of colors: Familiarize yourself with the psychological impact of different colors. For example, blue is often associated with trust and reliability, while red can evoke energy and urgency. Make sure to select colors that align with the brand's desired emotional response and the website's purpose.
• Create a mood board: Compile a mood board that includes color swatches, images, and examples that represent the desired look and feel of the website. This visual representation will help you and the client visualize the overall aesthetic and ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Test different color combinations: Experiment with different color combinations to find the ones that work best together. Consider using online color palette generators or design tools to explore various combinations and see how they complement each other.
• Ensure readability and accessibility: Keep in mind that the chosen colors should provide sufficient contrast to ensure readability, especially for text and important elements. Also, consider accessibility guidelines to ensure the color palette is inclusive and usable for individuals with visual impairments.
• Review on different devices: Test the color palette on multiple devices and screen sizes to ensure it stays consistent, effective, and appealing across different desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
• Document the color codes: Once the final color palette is selected, document the specific color codes (hex codes or RGB values) for future reference. This will ensure consistency when implementing the colors throughout the website and other marketing materials.

2. Designing a strong logo

Designing the right logo is a key element of successful website branding. A well-crafted logo can help potential customers distinguish and remember your brand, so investing time in designing one that reflects your values and image is essential.

Make sure to create a versatile and scalable design

Your client’s logo will be its most used design asset, so make sure you use multiple versions of the same concept optimized for any and every digital marketing channels such as Instagram stories and Twitter headers. Be sure to give your background contrast and select colors that help separate key components while keeping enough contrast between foregrounds and backgrounds.

Align all your elements to ensure everything is consistent in flow and directionality across different platforms. Size up your icon– when necessary, and resize it, so it looks professional regardless of size or context.

Keep it simple

Probably the most important thing to ensure with your client’s logo is to keep the design as simple as possible. Aim for a clean, memorable, and easily recognizable design while avoiding excessive details or complex elements that can make the logo visually cluttered or difficult to reproduce across different mediums.

3. Creating a consistent typography

Typography plays a significant role in how viewers process the information on the page, so choosing fonts that are easy to read and paying careful attention to the hierarchy of text style throughout the website is essential. Consistent typography will hold together all of your content, making it easier for users to navigate your site and find what they want.

The function should always be prioritized over style when choosing fonts, as legibility and readability are key. Here are some fonts that are commonly recommended for their legibility and readability on websites:

Specialized fonts for screens	Highly legible fonts:	Modern-looking fonts:
Droid Sans (Sans-serif) Georgia (Serif) Lato (Sans-serif) Merriweather (Serif) Minion (Serif) Verdana (Sans-serif)	Droid Sans (Sans-serif) Futura (Sans-serif) Georgia (Serif) Lato (Sans-serif) Merriweather (Serif) Minion (Serif) Montserrat (Sans-serif) Open Sans (Sans-serif) Roboto (Sans-serif) Verdana (Sans-serif)	Futura (Sans-serif) Lato (Sans-serif) Montserrat (Sans-serif) Open Sans (Sans-serif) Roboto (Sans-serif)

Sources: GatherContent, thrive, Toptal

A typeface with serif letters generally performs better than sans serif fonts in terms of comprehension, but ultimately it depends on the context of your website. Avoid using too many typefaces, as this can become visually confusing and make it easier for visitors to read.

Instead, focus on finding one prominent font family that works well with your brand identity and create variations within that same family for headers and other design elements. Creating consistent typography will help you establish a professional look that resonates with viewers while building trust in your brand.

4. Use unique imagery

When creating a website branding strategy, unique and original imagery must be used to reflect the brand’s identity. Stock photos are an easy way to achieve a professional website look, but if you want to stand out from competitors, it’s better to create custom images that haven’t been used before.

Images should be in high resolution and optimized for the web so they won’t slow down the loading speed of your site. It’s also important to make sure the images fit in with the overall feel of your website and help tell the story behind your brand. Using unique imagery will make your website more memorable and easily recognizable by viewers.

5. Write effective copy

Compelling copy should be written with the audience in mind, tailored to solve their needs and give them an enjoyable experience on the site. Additionally, SEO should be considered when crafting website content, as this will help boost your website’s visibility online and draw more potential customers to your business.

To make sure your website stands out from competitors, use high-quality language that appeals to the reader’s emotions and speaks directly to their needs. Crafting compelling copy that reflects your brand’s identity is a great way to engage with visitors and leave a lasting impression on them.

Your copy should also be tailored to match the design of your website. Integrating visuals such as infographics and videos into your content can help break up long blocks of text and draw readers in, while calls to action encourage users to take action.

Keeping paragraphs short and using simple language will also make the content easier to digest.

Additionally, it’s vital to proofread your work to ensure there are no typos or grammatical errors that could negatively impact the reader’s experience. A combination of creative ideas and well-crafted words will create stunning copy that entices readers and leaves a lasting impression.

6. Ensure mobile responsiveness

With most web traffic now coming from mobile devices, it’s important to ensure your website is optimized for mobile viewing.

Responsive design ensures that the desktop version of your website translates seamlessly across different devices and screen sizes, so users can access all the same content no matter what device they’re using.

Fast-loading speeds should be a priority when developing and designing a website, as slow-loading sites lead to lower user satisfaction and higher bounce rates. By making sure the website is mobile responsive, you can give users an easy-to-navigate experience no matter what device they’re on.

7. Provide a seamless user experience

User experience is essential for a successful website, so ensuring that your website provides visitors with a seamless experience is essential. Designing the site should put functionality and ease of navigation at the forefront, ensuring users can quickly and easily find what they’re looking for.

All elements of the site should be designed in such a way that allows visitors to navigate quickly and effortlessly throughout the pages. By providing visitors with an enjoyable user experience, you will increase the likelihood of them returning and engaging more deeply with your website.

8. Incorporate your social media branding

Incorporating the same branding guidelines from your social media strategy into your website, and vice versa, is a great way to connect with visitors and increase engagement. You should ensure that your website reflects the same look and feel as your social media pages, including the same color scheme, logo, font and overall message.

This will create an integrated user experience for visitors when navigating between the two platforms, helping to keep your brand at the forefront of their minds.

Additionally, you can use social media to embed images and posts directly on the website, giving visitors a consistently branded experience no matter where they are on the web.

9. Test site for usability

Testing the usability of your website is an essential part of ensuring that visitors have a seamless experience. You can use various tools and techniques to test usability, including A/B testing, user surveys, heatmaps and other analytics.

Additionally, it would help if you considered conducting user tests to observe how people interact with your site and identify improvement areas. Taking the time to test your website properly will help you create an enjoyable and intuitive experience for all your users.