May 3rd, 2005 by David Poteet

Does your web site help or hurt your brand?

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Filed under Branding

 

What's wrong with this statement?

"We need to make sure the look and feel of the site works with our branding."

At first this seems reasonable – obviously your web site should use colors, fonts, logos and language that are consistent with your brand identity as it appears in other media. But this statement misses the bigger point of brand. A good web site supports your brand with a focused message built around your brand promise. Consistent "look and feel" is just one aspect of that focused message.

In her book Designing Brand Identity, Alina Wheeler describes brand as "the promise, the big idea, and expectations that reside in each customer's mind about a product, service or company. Branding is about making an emotional connection. People fall in love with brands – they trust them, develop strong loyalties, buy them, and believe in their superiority. The brand is shorthand: it stands for something and demonstrates it."

Your brand promise (you may also hear this referred to as a value proposition or positioning statement) is the simple statement of what unique value you will provide to your customers. In the best cases, a brand promise can be embodied in a single word. It's not so much what you say you will do for the customer, as what your customers perceive you will do for them. In the end they will make decisions based on their perception of your promise compared to that of your competitors.

Wheeler describes positioning statements (brand promises) in this way:

"Positioning statements are short, pithy, powerful drivers in brand strategy. They are more than marketing slogans, since they summarize a promise to the customers. They also represent the organization's vision of the future: the big dream, the ultimate goal, the long-term possibilities."

Is your message focused?

Even bright intelligent people can have trouble keeping a multi-point brand promise in mind. For example, Volvo has many qualities that make it an excellent car company, but the one that people remember is "safety." Conversely, Chevrolet offers so many different types of vehicles with so many different key qualities that few people could tell you what their brand stands for. It has become diluted, and sales are declining as a result.

The point here is that while your product or service may have many wonderful qualities that are important, you should decide on what one or two ideas you want to emphasize in your brand promise. Focus on these, and people will usually assume the rest.

Is your web site helping or hurting your brand?

Take this simple test. Ask three or four people to visit your web site who have not been before (or have not visited in a while). Ask them:

  • How are we different from other [your organization type here]?
  • Based on your visit to our site, what are the top one or two reasons why you think someone would choose us?

If you hear a consistent response that summarizes your brand promise, then your site is working as it should. Congratulations!

However, if they have trouble answering either of these questions, or if you get wildly different answers from each person, you may have a problem. Just realizing this could spark a whole new look at your brand identity. And that's a good thing!

Of course, once you know what you want to say, you have to decide how best to say it. That's where creativity, marketing genius and effective design come in. But that's a whole other topic…

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