Crafting a quality website is like designing your brand. Every aspect of what your brand stands for must be included on the page, including the right color, emotions, services, and benefits. Your website is the ultimate online testament to what makes you unique.
When a visitor comes to your site, you have succeeded in getting their attention. Now, you must convince them of why you are unique. What makes your tree stand out in the forest?
Below we discuss the different aspects of your site that allow you to design your brand on your website.
Target Market
Who are you talking to you on your website?
All other branding and design questions stem from this one question. A toy maker and a banker do not talk the same way in real life. Why would they have the same website online? Plus, I would guess that they have two very distinct audiences aside from the eight 
year old saving every penny they find to save at the bank for their new action figure with the coolest gadgets and kid envying features available.
I doubt this audience is large enough, so figure out who will make or break your business. Then make your site enticing for those dream clients to visit you.
If you get nothing else from this article, please remember this:
Designing your brand on your site is not about making things pretty. You design your brand by discovering what your clients want.
For example, I deal with a number of Gen X and Baby Boomer small business owners. They want a simple solution to their online marketing queries. Fancy ideas generally do not fly, because most of them are not computer savvy enough to understand the full implications of how different internet marketing strategies work.
Most are brilliant entrepreneurs who just want someone to help them get it started. They know they need it, but are not sure how to do it. That is where I come in.
Any site I create for my clients is not a piece of art. Instead, my site is an elegant, professional website with larger fonts, fewer words, and highlights to key topics. Nothing else is necessary for me to cater to my market.
Color
Have you ever noticed that out of the top six social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest –
all of them have a white background?
Three of them have logos with a blue background and white text, and two of them are red with white text. The only exception is YouTube, which has a red and white logo with black and white alternating text.
What diversity of colors? Consider that these six sites use four colors between them, and receive 25% of all web traffic in the world.
However, this phenomenon is not exclusive to social media: PayPa: blue and white logo with white background; Chase: blue logo with white background; Bank of America: red and white logo with white background; Walgreens: red and white logo with white background; Google search: red, green, blue, and yellow logo with white background. Amazon bolts the trend with a orange and black logo with a white background.
But wait, there’s more! This is not just a US thing. RenRen, one of China’s largest social networks has a red, white, and blue logo with a white background as well. Same with China’s largest search engine, Baido.com. Vk.com, Europe’s largest social network, veers off a little with their Blue and white theme.
The reality is that most websites in the world are simple sites with basic hues of primary colors. Yes, there are sites like Logitech with its teal overtones that do very well. However, primary colors do extraordinary well.
Why? Well, we are comfortable with primary colors, since we all know their names. I know this might seem basic, but pander to people’s emotions. No one wants to feel stupid on a site. Instead, they want to feel confident that this site wants them to join them in whatever adventure they are running.
Just like offline, salespersons for years have noticed that “mirroring” works in selling to their customers, matching your sites mood to colors works online. Use basic colors that everyone likes to launch your business, and you will have more people appreciate your presence.
The only exception to this rule is if you are in an artistic field where you need to color up the site for demonstration purposes. In that case, keep the colors useful.
Value Proposition
Do you provide your clients with something valuable enough for them to turn over their credit card and pay you for your services?
Take 522 Digital’s value proposition. Their value proposition is to get behind your brand. How do they do that? They ask the right questions to help you develop your story.
In the end, if you do not offer a strong enough value proposition, your brand will not succeed because you do not offer enough value for prospects to become clients. That is why so many companies fail. They do not fail to provide a distinct brand. They fail to offer something of significant value to be useful to consumers.
If your target market does not see the need in using your services they will go somewhere else, or just bypass your offer altogether.
That is why we continue to go to Google for search, because we know they have created a valuable service for free. In exchange for ads throughout your search, Google allows you to search the internet for free. This is their value proposition. One which made them billions of dollars.
At the same time, you use Tide Detergent, because you know that your clothes will smell fresh and have the same quality ingredients for every use.
Bringing Your Web Brand Together
Designing your brand online has more to do with creating a cohesive image of how you can help people rather than the colors you use. However, when you put together the right look and feel of your site with a good understanding of your target market then you will find a quality combination that can lift your business to heights yet unseen. Your website is the place where you can tie all the different elements of your brand together.
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our website standing out from others is something everyone thinks of. Being creative and implementing all new designing and development ideas helps
Hello,
good work done here. designing a brand needs a lot of focus and creativity. if someone wants to launch a successful brand/website, this article from the Stars Contest blog on using color in design may be useful:
http://starscontest.com/blog/fathom-the-world-of-colorful-web-designing/
Thanks for this! 🙂 If you’d also like to check http://sleeklogos.com for their available web and logo designs.
Balance is key Travel Carma! Like the song goes, you can’t have one without the other!
Andy Nathan would love you to read ..The Six Insider Secret’s Of Contagious Content
I really liked the section on color in this article. I never realized how simple the logos are for some of these companies. It just goes to show you, simple is usually better.
Absolutely Donald! People think you need these complex logos, but all they do is confuse you in the end.
Andy Nathan would love you to read ..The Six Insider Secret’s Of Contagious Content
Color is so important when creating a web page. Like you said, most professional, well-trafficked, websites use two to three colors that are pretty much neutral. It’s more pleasing to the eye and is clean. Creating your color scheme could make or break your website.
Hello,Andy Nathan .
I just read your discussion. and i fully agree with u. i have web design company. i think i benefited from that post. also got some idea how to make website unique and got more traffic. keep writing :)thanks Moqtadir Rakib
Moqtadir Rakib would love you to read ..Hello world!
Hi. Andy. Your thought about colors made me think. I am currently thinking about changing the logo of my site. However, there is something at the back of my mind that bothers me. If big names were already using blue or red, isn’t it detrimental to follow them? Somehow, I am thinking that at least you need to stand out if you want to be recognized. If not, it is easy to become a copycat.Anyways, thanks for the idea.
Hello Andy, The posting gots a useful information to make a good will of the company. But the main part of making the goodwill is the company logo. The company logo must be eye-catching, that’s true the logo of the company is the first impression over the client that will be very important to get the trust of the customer. Thank you so much for sharing these ideas.
@Andy
Hey your post is quite impressive. I really enjoyed to read your post about website branding. Designing is all depend on website layout,products,colors etc. Strong branding makes your business successful in targeted market.
Great job on this article. It demonstrates how much thought and effort actually goes into making a quality logo and Brand ID. The challenge is always maintaining focus on all the separate components that make up the whole.
I love this article full of awesome information, I wish I would have read this article a year ago before I have created my website, I was new with building websites and did not such a good job and know I spend lot of time fixing and improving issues and often my Google ranking is being affected, I just wish I would have taking my time and created a perfect site or at list better one, any way no more crying from me 🙂 thank you for great information keep doing what you do and a have a great day.
Andy, You have not put any thing in Author bio?
I think that does not looks good when you go for branding. 😀
Thanks
Nicely written article Andy. Whether it is a color, logo, image or even a phone number, I think building a brand is so important but it does require a lot of time and money invested. Many small companies would rather just market or advertise to try and get immediate business as opposed to building “their brand” which sometimes doesnt show the rewards until far down the road. However, for those that are able to do it, the benefits of brand recognition can increase a companies growth exponentially.
Hi Andy,
It’s funny that I didn’t notice the similarity in color choice for the websites you’ve mentioned. I’m happy that I’ve chosen red for my main pages. My post pages are mostly black and white. I use photos for color and solid imagery to enhance the content. I may copy your use of red text to highlight key points. Blue is an interesting color to use too. Very interesting discussion. Thanks!
Cheryl,
Glad you found the color information interesting. Why are you just using black and white on your post pages? Since most visitors will probably come to your site through your post pages, you might want to use the red them on your post pages as well.
Andy
Very informative article on ensuring the content is based on target market initiatives. Thanks !
Thanks for this Andy. It’s quite interesting what you pointed out about the colours. I just went though the process of brand and logo design with a client. Based on the nature of the business we decided for red and black on a white background. The other option was blue and white. It’s good to know we’re on track 🙂
Rob,
Thanks for agreeing with me on the idea that overwhelmingly colorful does not necessary always equal more sales.
Andy
branding is more important to build any business in the business world, branding is factor of creating trust among the target audience, it helps to stay on with business and helps to create loyalty customers. thanks for sharing and reminding the things need to know when branding. I love your post
A brand name is the authenticity of any product, and it is very important when it comes in online business where on the bases of visuals your customer trusts your product. The brand presence in market, business growth all these factors connected with your product quality, visuals and presentation.
I think you have made some really great and valid points in this post. I knew most of the stuff that you mentioned, but I did also learn a few things from it. Thanks a lot for the post and I hope in the future too you shall continue providing us your insights.
While you are designing your brand’s online presence, you must need to check all the important aspects like your business niche, targeted users, your current potential customers, your brand’s offline market value and much more. After this you need to design a website by considering all these factors. Select a color which suits your niche website and help your business to attract users.
Branding is ultimately important when it comes to online businesses and visual is more important to attract visitors eye balls to tend the page for long time and read everything, so we can get good conversion.
Thanks.
I’ll often see for some smaller-medium size brands their brand is not cohesive across all mediums. It’s important to be sure your print/online/email/etc branding is consistent.
Steve,
Agree with you on cohesion. I do my best to get one image that I can use on every platform.
Andy
Making a blog/site is easy but making it a good brand and taking it too the next level is a very hard task and in this many of get disappointment.Today every day a number of blogs get started but their is a very less number of people who stay with their blogs and this is also a reason that their is lack of good blogs.
I can’t stand visiting websites that are dark and difficult to read, it’s a huge turnoff for me. I guess most major websites know this all too well and they design their sites so that it’s easy on the eyes. Really, what possesses someone to have a black background with yellow lettering? What’s the point?
Ty,
Completely agree with you. Have a client who demanded black website even after we told her it would be a distraction for customers. Not surprisingly, her sales have slumped.
Andy
Nowadays, for the successful promotion of business, big or small, its active presence on social media platforms is a must. Apart from that, whatever you have mentioned here definitely fits the bill for what to do to attract visitors. All these definitely help in pushing the brand value up.
Hey Andy.
Thanks for showing interest in this topic. I love to make my website more and more unique than others. I don’t like those blogs, those have black and other background except white. I think 2 thing mainly effect on your website. 1 – If you have a unique kind of theme and No one don’t have that kind of a theme than your users will feel good because I’ve seen a lot of website they seem like each others. 2 – Is your content. You must have known that our content is king. We should put unique content that others and the topics of our website should be interesting.
Thanks
Bilal,
Content in the end does make the difference.
Andy
Nowadays, it is very essential to build up your brand’s presence online – regardless of how big or small your brand is. When it comes to business promotion from a positive angle, being active on social media channels is a must. This allows you to create a positive impression of your company. And thanks Andy, for sharing the post!
Jack,
Social Media is important as well! Glad you enjoyed the post.
Andy
I think that the colors, type of brand and the market in which you hope to sell your brand into is very important to creating a brand that is well-designed and will gain the most profit from consumers. Thanks for the ideas!
Robert,
If you have a brand that will not work with blur or red, then yes you might want to consider doing something else. A good example is Mary Kay and the Pink Cadillac.
However as an attorney standing out means having a unique benefit for your target audience.
However, for an attorney you want to represent your self as professional as well. Blue subconsciously helps.
In regards to branding, be more concerned that your unique benefit matches your target audience.
Andy Nathan would love you to read ..Zig Ziglar Secrets Of Closing The Sale