Web Design Is a Powerful Branding Element – Here’s How to Use It

Establishing your visual identity through web design is one of the first steps when creating a new website from scratch or updating your existing one. For a business owner, to say that finding high-quality web design solutions is easy would be an understatement. The web design service industry is a $20 billion market in the US alone, and you can always find an agency that can design an intuitive, nice-looking website to impress clients. By the latest count, there are more than 38 million designers worldwide. However, web design is more than just the way a website looks. It’s also a powerful branding element, one that you cannot afford to ignore.

When designing a website, it’s not enough to make something pretty. To make the most of it, the web design needs to be aligned with your brand’s identity, send a consistent message, and use visual cues to inform the visitor what your values as a company are. In an Internet where 16 million websites are published every day, a site that looks good can miss its mark if it doesn’t emphasize your brand’s unique strengths.

Here are a few factors you should pay attention to when designing your website:

Colors Tell a Story

When starting work on a new website, most designers will ask you two general things to establish its look and feel: the style you have in mind and the colors. If you already have a company logo or company colors, this decision will be easier because all you have to do is incorporate these colors in the design, and this will have a nice consistent result.

Just like in art, the colors used in web design elicit an emotional response from the client and subconsciously make them associate your brand with a particular value. If you look at the websites of some of the biggest companies, you’ll see that nothing was left to chance, and the colors they chose are highly suggestive. For example:

•     Red: inspires power, passion, and energy, and companies like Coca-Cola use it to attract attention and appeal to the youth. At the same time, red is also the color of urgency, which is why news websites love it.
•     Orange and Yellow: through their association to the sun, inspire warmth and friendliness.  
•     Blue: is a serene color that inspires trust, reliability. It’s one of the most popular choices for the websites of corporations, insurance, and loan websites.
•     Green: inspires nature and freshness. If your company offers sustainable services and it’s eco-aware, this is the color to choose from.
•     Black: is a versatile color that can be used for general websites but, with the right elements, it works great for promoting luxury goods and services.

If you have more than one company colors and aren’t sure how to combine them, creating a mood board with examples from similar companies and showing it to your web design agency is a good starting point because you can brainstorm ideas together.

Don’t Neglect Consistency

Efficient web design is one that people remember. It’s when a particular design element becomes so uniquely tied to your brand that people immediately recognize your style. And how can you achieve that? By being consistent. Consistency is essential in web design and branding for two reasons:

• It makes the website more intuitive and easier to navigate. People don’t want to be confused when browsing through a website. Everything has to tie in together, not change from page to page.
• It helps you better express your company values and deliver a specific message.

You can achieve consistency in web design by placing buttons and icons in the same place throughout the website, using similar fonts and colors, the same padding and margins, and respecting the visual hierarchy. Whenever you update an element on the site, all the other old elements need to be updated, too, otherwise, there will be a clash, and that could even end up affecting the functionality of the website.

Establish Your Main Brand Attributes and Make Sure They Show Through the Design

What makes your brand unique? What are your defining traits? Let’s have a look at these five examples:

• Sophistication: you sell luxury products and services, you’re an upscale brand and want to make yourself known for your exclusivity
• Excitement: your services are for the young at heart, you want to break the rules and be adventurous
• Family-oriented: your business is dependable, kind, transparent and thoughtful
• Professional: you’re all about quality, leadership, and competence
• Outdoorsy: you promote sports and a healthy way of life

Even if you don’t have any other idea in mind, tell your designer what your brand attributes are, and they’ll know where to start. Keep in mind that a website visitor is more likely to become a client if your brand’s personality is similar to their own.

The Importance of Being Unique

A beautiful, user-friendly website can make a good impression, or at least not disappoint the visitor. But that’s not enough if you want to build your brand. If your website looks average and doesn’t stand out with anything from the millions of other websites out there, then what does that say about your brand?

Downloading a decent-looking but non-memorable WordPress theme may seem like a good way to cut costs, but it might not help you too much in the long run. If a visitor lands on your website and sees a theme that they recognize from elsewhere, that doesn’t really make a good impression. Out of all the websites that are live on the Internet, 70% are designed by professionals and the rest of 30% on DIY platforms like Wix and Squarespace. If you have experience in web design or you want to play around with design elements, then these platforms can be a good idea but, to make sure the result looks super professional, it’s best to contact a designer.

responsive web design concept -DepositPhotos

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