Components of a Successful Brand Website
It may be obvious, but having a well-constructed website is essential to representing your brand properly. Whether you are building, growing, or ensuring consistency with your established brand, your website should reflect who you are, what you do, and WHY you do it. And further, your site should provide enough content for consumers to know why they should engage with or buy products or services from your brand. On top of all of this, your website should look nice.
As a marketing consultancy, we have opportunities to help brands find their look, feel, and message to convey through their websites. It may seem like a lot of focus on the small details, but trust us, the end result is always worth it. Now, we can’t be giving away all our secrets… but here are a few things to keep in mind when you are building your brand’s website!
Design
Follow a brand style guide. Part of our brand building pillar is helping brands develop their signature style, from colors to fonts, to even refreshing or creating new logos. It is important that your website and content stay consistent across the board, defining a clear brand identity. Not only will this look appealing and cohesive, but your brand image will stand out as recognizable when viewers come across your content again. One example of a brand we’ve helped to stylize can be seen on Optimal Bio’s recent website relaunch.
Think mobile. It’s easy to get tunnel vision when constructing a beautiful website in desktop format. While this is important, the fact is that a large chunk of viewers are going to be looking at your site from their phone or mobile device. Since the end of 2019, over half of global web traffic has come from mobile devices. Making sure your site has a mobile format that is just as appealing and easy to navigate as your desktop version is a detail that cannot be ignored!
Content
Tell your story. Everyone loves a good story, and consumers today increasingly value brand authenticity and personability. Share why you do what you do, how you got started, how you give back, or simply your passion for the business. Maybe introduce your team members on your website, putting some faces to the brand name. Consumers will be drawn to the fact that your brand has its own personality through your site.
Include samples, reviews, or references. Add some credibility to your site by sharing examples of past work and highlighting reviews from clients, customers, or any PR your brand has received. We live in the generation of scrolling through endless Amazon reviews and Yelp-ing any restaurant ahead of trying it. Consumers want to know what they are getting before they make a purchase!
Have calls to action & methods of contact. Offer a newsletter signup, interest form, or any other pop-up that gives users the opportunity to engage with your brand. If you have active brand socials, make sure to link them on your site for easy access. Importantly, make sure there is a clear and direct way that users can contact your brand on the site. Whether it’s a contact form, email address, or phone number, you want to let consumers know there is an open line of communication for questions or inquiries.
Maybe even a blog… We obviously love it! Depending on your brand or industry, a blog can be a valuable addition to your platform: a way to share hot takes, show personality, and position yourself as a voice in your industry. We like to have all of our team members contribute, but a blog could be anything you want to represent your brand!
Back-End Operations
Know your SEO, both on and off-page. It is crucial to have someone writing for your website that is educated in the importance of SEO or search engine optimization. Knowing what keywords are going to push your page higher in the user search results can make or break how your website performs. Keep SEO in mind for your page copy, titles, product descriptions, URLs, and more.
Make data-driven decisions. This may seem like the boring side of things, but using an analytics tool or hiring an outside source to interpret your website data is very powerful. User data will show you what is working and what isn’t. Whatever your website conversion goals are, from page views to newsletter signups, or a purchase on your eCommerce site, you must keep track of what is positively or negatively impacting the reaching of those goals. This way, you can know what to change and what to continue doing on your site.
A website can make or break the user experience with your brand. There are too many details in building a website to fit in one blog, but these are some of our top tips. Represent your brand, keep it user-friendly, and make those data-driven decisions! As always, we’re here to help if you need us.
