Every single touchpoint someone has with you is helping to build a picture of you and your business to help them decided whether they want to work with you. It’s important that they have a consistent experience through these touch points that reflects your business and gives a good impression of what it would be like to work with you. This is why I want to demonstrate the importance of continuing your brand strategy through your website.
Your website is the first place most potential clients and customers will go once they’ve heard about you to find out more.
Whether they’ve seen you on social media, seen your van go past or a friend has given them your business card, they will do some more research. If what they find on your website isn’t what they expect to see, then already they will start to doubt their choice.
These are the key things you need to consider when checking you are continuing your brand strategy through to your website
Consistent Clear Use of Your Logo
This sounds simple but it’s something people often don’t do well. Maybe they’ve decided they don’t really like the logo anymore and don’t want to use it, so they start changing it on their digital platforms but not in print.
There are other times when we’ve seen people try to DIY their branding and they imagine their logo being used in a larger format and then create something that is illegible when it’s shrunk down to the size needed for a website header.
Having a professionally created logo as part of a full branding process will mean that your brand designer things about the range of ways it will be used and create something that truly reflects your business and can be used consistently so people build up a greater recognition of your brand. Then when they come to visit your website, they see what they’re expecting and are brought more into a buying mindset.
Clever Use of a Logo Mark
I love a brand that includes a small logo mark. This is my business logo. We use the W as a small logo mark on its own as well as the full logo. The W is on the front of our branded hoodies to one side of our chest, we’ve made stickers with it on to give as freebies and bringing it back to websites, it’s a great thing to use for your Favicon.
Ready Steady Websites Logo
You might be thinking, what’s a Favicon?
It’s the little icon in the tab of a web page in your browser. So, if you’re reading this on a computer you may have a few tabs open, or a lot if you’re me!! And you will see a little icon next to the name in the tab. By making that icon instantly recognisable by effectively using your branding, people will be reminded of you and your business every time they look at their tabs and it will remind them to come back to you.
I wrote a whole post on the Ready Steady Websites® blog about how to make the most of your Favicon which you might find useful.
Consistent Tone of Voice and Messaging
As I’m sure you’re aware, your brand isn’t just about visuals, it’s about how and what you are communicating to people as well.
It’s important to ensure what you are offering to a potential client is consistent across everything you’re putting out there. It’s really confusing if you go to networking and purely talk about a bespoke one to one service you offer but on your website the content is all about group programmes, for example.
It's also important that your content sounds like you. If when you’re networking or being a guest on a podcast, you’re quite informal and let your sense of humour come through but on your website all your blog posts are really formal, then people are going to wonder if they’ve come to the right place.
Or alternatively if you always present yourself in a very professional manner in line with a professional service you offer but your website has a lot of mistakes on it and the content hasn’t been updated for a while, then that instantly diminishes your professionalism.
Use of Appropriate Imagery
This one is in some ways the most important because the visual impression someone gets of your website is their first impression. If that’s all wrong, they might not even bother reading the content.
The key things to consider with imagery are:
Are the images of the quality that reflect the business? So, think professional brand photos of the team instead of a slightly dodgy selfie or even worse, a waxy AI version of each person.
Are the images up to date? So, if someone looked at your photo on your about page and then arranged to meet you for a coffee, would they recognise you in the coffee shop? Be honest!!
Are the photos reflective of the business? I once reviewed a family lawyers’ website that looked more like a travel agency based on the header image.
In Summary
Everything must feel right for someone to work with you.
If someone experiences something they aren’t expecting from one of their touch points with you, it could lead them to doubt whether you’re the right person or business to work with. That makes the difference between getting the client or not.
That in summary is the importance of continuing your brand strategy through to your website, the place that people ultimately end up to check you out.
Author Bio
Jude Wharton is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Websites®, a website service helping small business owners generate leads through their website and to turn those leads into sales. Jude and her business partner and husband, Chris launched Ready Steady Websites® in 2019 and they have been running a successful digital design company, 2nd Floor Designs Ltd since 2010. They are also the co-authors of The Website Handbook.
