8 Website Design Basics That Guarantee Branding Success

Are you creating a website or do you have a website? Are you looking for some inspiration to help you establish your website as a brand?

A website plays a vital role in building a brand, and brand building helps you to attract and keep customers. No matter the size of your business, even a personal website can help you to build a strong brand.

Let’s do an exercise: what comes to mind when you think of Amazon? I bet you thought of the company’s image on its website.

You might say, “Okay, I get the point, but how can I achieve the same result with my new website?” First, pat yourself on the back because you’re asking the right question. In this article, you’ll discover 8 website design basics that will help you to build a successful brand.

1. Establish Your Strategy

Anyone can build a website or even promote it. But if you don’t know how it will work or what you want to achieve from it, it’s not going to be successful. It will just be another website on the Internet.

That’s why you need to have a strategy. Ask yourself, “Where do I want to go and how do I get there from here?” Then you can figure out what you need to do to get you there. Determine:

• Why you’re building a website
• What you want from your website
• How you’ll achieve your results

Research your niche, develop a strategy, and measure your strategy’s effectiveness.

2. Make a Good First Impression

According to Nielsen Norman Group, the “first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for users’ decision to stay or leave.”

That’s why your website must make a great first impression on users. A bad user experience can hurt your site and affect your brand value.

Keep in mind three principles when you’re creating a website:

• Tell stories. Doing so will help to convey your message more clearly, and users are more likely to engage with your products or service.
• Fonts and color palette are key in branding. Think five times before picking the color scheme, theme, and font for your website.
• Your logo should represent your brand style and personality. Don’t use too much color in the logo. I recommend that you hire a graphic designer to create an interactive logo.

See the homepage design of Ellevest:

Why I find it brilliant:

• The design is simple and straight to the point.
• Their headline, “Invest Like a Woman: Because Money is Power” appeals to visitors’ emotions (both women and someone interested in making smart financial choices).
• An image shows that they’re with you no matter what device you’re using.

3. Create an Interesting “About Us” Page

The About Us page of your website provides you an opportunity to talk about your identity and values. But don’t make the page boring.

The tone of your writing should be interactive and show your brand’s personality. This page is one of the most important pages of your website, so you should make it stand out!

Yellow Leaf Hammocks tell us a story on their About Us page.

Do you have a great story? Your About Us page is the place to put it. People like stories and are more likely to connect with you if you utilize them.

What does your About Us page say?

4. Improve Page Load Speed

Page loading time is crucial for a better user experience. It’s also an important factor when it comes to getting a good search engine ranking, according to Google. Every second counts!

Forty percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Does your website take more than three to four seconds to load? If yes, then you need to fix this problem NOW!

Are you wondering how can you improve your page speed? Here are six things you can do right away:

• Reduce server response time
• Use a content delivery network (CDN)
• Optimize image size and format
• Optimize CSS
• Reduce the number of plugins you’re using
• Fix all the broken links

A high performing website can help you to build a strong brand presence. Use the tool GTmetrix  to check your site’s loading speed.

5. Make Your Website Customer-Centric

What’s the first and foremost purpose of your website? You want to drive sales and conversions, right? Create informative content that is easy to navigate. Tutorials and videos are great ways to guide your users.

Do some research in order to know your target audience members and what keywords they use. Make sure your website works on mobile devices and includes clear and actionable calls-to-action (CTA).

Your website should provide a solution to your users. For example, Pack is one of the best websites for every dog lover.

Is your website customer-centric?

6. Build an Email List from Day One

You must start building your email list the day your website goes live. Your email list is one of your biggest assets. It will help you to improve your sales dramatically.

Email is the best way to build a strong relationship with your subscribers and provide value to them. It’s a great way to become an authority in your niche. But how can you get your visitor’s contact information?

A website is the best place to collect email addresses. According to MarketingSherpa, “77% of marketers use website registration pages to build email lists.”

Let your visitors know what they will get or what they should expect. Content upgrades or free trials can make great conversions for you.

Nathan Ellering, Content Marketing Lead at CoSchedule shares his take on content upgrades here:

I’ve tried lots of different approaches to solving that problem, and the absolute best way is to provide some highly relevant, actionable, and valuable free content on each blog post in exchange for an email address. This bonus content has been called lead magnets and content upgrades, and when done well, they can convert up to 20% of all visitors to a blog post…it’s the absolute best way to build an email list of active subscribers, just like how we’ve built a list of more than 100,000 subscribers at CoSchedule.

Start building your community of subscribers now!

7. Place Testimonials on Your Website

If you want to build authority, you first need to create a pattern of trust with your users. Social proofs, such as testimonials, are a great way to build trust.

People are more likely to buy from a site that has customer testimonials and user reviews. So place customer testimonials on your website and let people know that you are a credible authority.

eWedding is a platform for creating a custom wedding website. They display numbers in their headline: “Over 800,000 wedding websites built!” This is a great social proof!

Basecamp features its customers’ quotes:

8. Create a Clear Mission Statement

Outstanding brands have one thing in common: a clear mission! Craft a message that shows what you are passionate about. Show your customers what value you are providing to them.

See how NIKE did a great job. Their mission statement is to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”

They take this statement a step further by saying, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

What’s your mission?

Website Design Basics Wrap-up!

No matter the size of your company, building a strong brand presence is important. But it’s not an easy task; it takes a lot of effort. Creating an interactive and beautiful website can help you with this process.

Now it’s your turn. What techniques are you using for building a successful brand?

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Kunjal Panchal

Kunjal Panchal is a former SEO Analyst turned digital marketing consultant with an exposure of more than a decade in Internet marketing industry. She specializes in targeted traffic, conversions and lead generation. She uses her laser-focused knowledge to help start-ups and SMBs achieve online success by being more digital-focused. She has shared her inputs on high-end publications like Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur and many more. Catch her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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