Fred Burt said, “A brand is a reason to choose.” That’s true even in today’s scenario. A brand is a combination of many elements. But, among all Visual Branding is most important. Even visual branding comprises many elements.
Though branding is important for every business whether online or off-line, but for eCommerce businesses, it is even more significant.
Visual elements such as imagery, colors, logo, fonts, tone of communication, etc., gives a brand its unique identity. Visual Branding also helps marketers in making good and useful eCommerce marketing strategy. Many experts even have proved that well-thought-out and good visual branding can increase the revenue of a brand by 23% to 25%.
Visual branding is also a great marketing tool for attracting new visitors and converting them into customers.
Although a brand manual is a guide of using the logos, colors, fonts, styles, etc., of a brand which makes the brand’s appearance at places consistent. It is essential for every business irrespective of its online or off-line nature of business.
But in the case of eCommerce businesses, Visual branding is a little different. In this post, we will discuss some very important points in relation to the visual branding for eCommerce Businesses.
Let’s start with the Do’s and Don’ts of Visual Branding for eCommerce Businesses.
1. Choose the Right Brand Colour
Colours are very important in Visual Branding. Colors express the emotions and ethics of your brand. Colors have complete psychology of user behavior, hence it can’t be ignored. Rather the colors of a brand should be chosen very carefully.
For instance, you would have seen companies selling products for kids and infants choose a light color theme, whereas companies selling products for adults choose bright and dark colors.
Similarly, brands that deal in feminine products choose colors like pink, purple, yellow, etc., because they are thought to be gentle colors. Whereas companies dealing in men’s products usually choose dark colors which are thought to be tough like red, black, brown, dark blue, etc.
Even the choice of brand colors can have an impact on the decision-making of the customers while buying your products. For instance, men usually don’t buy floral color clothes, bags, etc., whereas women do buy floral color products. Hence, choose your brand colors very carefully.
2. Choose Right Type of Images
A picture is worth a thousand words. In eCommerce businesses, pictures are very important.
Whether they are product pictures, or pictures representing categories, sections, etc., they all should be chosen very carefully.
Pictures or images are an inseparable part of visual branding. Even good pictures can help create good and long-lasting consumer-business relationship.
In the world of digital marketing, images play a very important role in improving conversion rates and sales. Even the right images can set the right communication tone and the right expectation for the users.
It is also important to select the right type of images like the .jpg, .png, or .svg, etc. Where .png images are very high quality but they take a long time to load completely on the browsers.
Whereas, the .svg images load very fast on any browser. So, you should choose the image types according to your business needs and consumer choice.
Choosing the wrong images or irrelevant images might ruin your business performance. It is also true in the case of Ad campaigns.
Right images used in Ads can increase your click-through rate and conversion rates, whereas wrong images can ruin your entire Ad campaign.
So you should make sure that your:
- Images are of good quality
- Images are relevant to your Brand
- Pictures you use have the contrast with your “call to action” button to avoid confusion for the user thinking where to click
- Messaging is right on your images
- Images are of the right size, as well as SEO Optimized with proper alt attributes and descriptions if required.
3. Do Not Copy Branding Style of Competitors
You can do your competitor analysis for content, traffic, product, pricing, etc., but do not copy their branding style.
Rather doing your competitive analysis can help you create even a stronger brand identity for your business than your competitors.
You can build your brand focusing on your competitor’s weak points and succeed. But, your brand should stand true to its values and purpose.
If you copy the branding style of your competitors your customers might not be able to differentiate between you and your competitors.
To stand apart you need to have your own and different brand identity.
4. Create a Unique and Distinctive Brand Style
Every brand is different and hence your brand should also be different than others. Different in style, different in approach, different in strategy, and different in product or service offering.
Technically everything which collectively makes your brand stand apart from the competitors should be there in your brand creation and visual branding. For instance, there could be hundreds of hotels in a city, but the ones that have unique branding, and offering for the customers do get the most footfalls.
You should pay attention to all specifications that can make your brand different from others. It could be your logo, your website structure, the imagery on your website, products, your offerings, etc.
It has been found in researches and consumer surveys that the websites which are not visually appealing and don’t have good user interface have a very low conversion rate and very high bounce rate compared to the websites which are visually appealing and have a good user interface.
Even customers said in a survey that they don’t visit a website again which doesn’t appeal to them in the first place.
So, your branding impacts your sales and conversions. Hence, you need to create a unique and distinctive brand for your business and leave a good first impression on your customers about your brand.
Let your brand be the reason for your customers to choose you over your competitors.
5. Design a Perfect Logo for Your Brand
A logo is the first impression of your business. A logo can play a fundamental role in your sales success, conversion rate, and brand awareness.
A good logo design can also increase your brand recognition by a lot. This is already proved by a lot of experts in marketing. Hence, you should pay great attention to every possible detail while designing your brand logo.
If a brand logo grabs people’s attention and creates a good first impression it has high chances of conversion and creating brand awareness than all other mediums and advertisements.
A logo represents a brand and it is a visual representation of a company. The design and color of the logo if crafted thoughtfully tells a story in itself.
So, do not compromise on creating the best logo for your brand. If required you can take the help of a person or company specialized in creating brand logos and branding collaterals.
You can even contact us if you want us to create a unique brand style and logo for your business.
You Should Also Read: Importance of Logo in Branding & Marketing
6. Have a Brand Manual and Educate Everyone to follow it religiously
A brand logo and brand colors should be used in a way that is consistent and seamless everywhere. Be it on the website, stationery, newsletters, visiting cards, merchandise, products, ads, or anywhere else.
To do that you can take the help of your branding manual. You can share the branding manual with your employees, vendors, partners, and everyone who is associated with your brand.
Your brand should be represented well. Take examples of Google, Apple, Samsung, Pepsi, Coco-Cola, Amazon, their logo, and colors are used in such a way that they represent their brand right.
A branding manual clearly defines the colors, logo, the way logos can be used, and the sizes of the logo. Hence, make sure to have your brand manual with you to share with others who are associated with your brand.
7. Define the Core Values of your Company
Defining your core values defines what you want to be known for. Sharing your brand’s core values with your audience will help them to better identify your company and its goals.
Consumers usually choose a brand, which seems to be trustworthy and expresses some important values which set it apart from the competitors. For example, apple’s core values are to create few but great products.
Many businesses fail because they have undefined or weak core values. It is important to take into consideration that your core values are relevant to your brand and how your brand behaves in different situations.
That’s why we first work on understanding and defining the VMV (mission-vision-values) for any client we work with. Many good marketing and advertising agencies do this to create a unique and distinctive brand identity for their clients.
The VMV framework of a company gives a lot of insights based on which the marketing and branding agencies create their visual branding and communication strategy.
Mostly the core values are based on the brand’s objectives and the strong points which set them apart from the competition.
8. Make Your Brand Speak Visually
A good brand doesn’t need words to tell its story. Its images, colors, fonts, and logo speak for itself. DeeBeers doesn’t need to explain that they sell high-quality diamonds. Rolex logo speaks for itself that it is on the most expensive timepieces. Amazon’s logo represents that they sell an A-to-Z range of products.
What does that mean? It simply means that your brand should not only be structurally impressive but it should be impressive visually as well. Visual branding has been the key to success for most of the successful brands.
Simply putting you should create your brand identity in such a way that your visitors make a positive impression from your website visuals, like the text size, colours, images, icons, etc.
9. Avoid Overusing Marketing Trends and out-of-place Visuals
Following marketing trends is always beneficial for a brand. But, overusing the trends and putting in a lot of irrelevant elements can kill the brand campaign. Overusing the marketing trends and irrelevant visuals in order to make your ads or campaigns stand out may demean the purpose of visual branding.
The brand elements such as images, logo, fonts, colors, icons, etc., should all be used in a balanced manner. Even the written content should ideally be supported with meaningful infographics, a video, or an image to enrich it.
Make sure to present your brand in the right manner and not in a way that makes the audience lose interest in your brand.
10. Design Your Brand and Website with Customers in Mind
Your website is the digital face of your company and brand. It should be designed very thoughtfully keeping the customers in mind. Make sure to use images that are customer-centric. Similarly, the content of your website should be easy to read and digest by the customers.
Good quality and meaningful images along with useful content can increase your conversion and engagement significantly.
Every penny you invest in designing user-friendly UX and UI can give you a high return on your investment.
You can use your buyer persona map to design your website and impress your customers. You can always make improvements to your UI and UX based on user feedback and your own analysis.
Also Read: How Should a Professional eCommerce Website Designed
Conclusion
Visual branding is important for any business but in the case of eCommerce businesses, it is even more significant. Hence, every eCommerce business should give proper time and attention to create its unique and distinctive visual branding to impress its customers.
