Digital Lab

Step #1: Define your brand personality

In her paper, Dimensions of Brand Personality, Jennifer Aaker listed five dimensions of a brand personality:

● Sincerity
● Excitement
● Competence
● Sophistication
● Ruggedness

Any brand’s personality can be expressed using a mix of these brand personality dimensions, with one being the most prominent.

Furthermore, each of these brand personality dimensions translates to a set of traits:

But how is a brand personality or these brand personality dimensions and traits relevant for website branding?

Well, each brand personality mix translates to a unique website branding. To get some perspective, think about how consumer brand websites are different from dating websites. The former stresses its sincerity aspect, while the latter is all about excitement.

Web design — and website branding — choices vary greatly based on a brand’s personality. For example, below, you have a website for an investment firm. Notice how the website’s branded to reinforce what the brand stands for: (Check out the live website full with slick animations here: https://www.nvoli.com/; Project by 2Point Website Design Agency)

In contrast, this is another one of our projects for a digital marketing business. This website’s branding, as you can see, invokes very different emotions: (Check out the live interactive website here: https://www.8thgreen.com/; Project by 2Point)

Step #2: Use web design to create a brand identity that represents your brand personality
Now use your brand personality type (dimensions + traits) to design a (visual) brand identity that conveys who you are as a brand through your website.

While you can complete step one by yourself, this website branding step needs web design expertise. If you don’t have in-house web designers and branding experts, consider hiring a web design agency like 2Point that specializes in website branding.

In this step, you use your brand personality to make your brand identity visual choices. For example:

✓ If your brand personality is primarily sincere while being accessible, you can go with the Sans Serif font family, as fonts like Helvetica look modern and professional and can invoke just the right emotions in your users. (And yes, fonts invoke emotions!)

✓ Your brand’s color palette is another element you’ll finalize at this point using your brand personality. Colors influence humans on deep subconscious levels. That’s why choosing the right brand colors and schemes is central to good website branding. Did you know some colors naturally invoke certain brand personality dimensions? Refer to this Canva resource for more:

✓ Your website’s layout, too, is a big part of your website branding. A website with a lot of white space influences users in a certain way, whereas a busy design speaks to different buying behaviors. You get the drift.

On top of these, also set standards for creative assets like images (stock photos), icons, etc., that you’ll use as part of your visual brand identity at this point. If you already have a website, evaluate it and see if these different website branding elements are in line with your brand personality.

Your website’s copy and content (and their voice and tone) too contribute to your website branding. In this website branding guide, though, we’re primarily talking about design.
Step #3: Optimize for conversions

Here’s the thing: Great website branding is an essential — that’s how people know your website as yours. But you can get everything right about your website branding (layouts, colors, fonts, animations — everything!) and yet fail to meet your business goals with your website channel.

Think about your homepage. Can users instantly spot the information they have likely come there for? A follow-up question: Did you do the audience research you needed to… to find this out in the first place? Were you able to convey within the first 2.6 seconds of your users’ visit what your key homepage message is? Is clicking the call to action button the most natural thing to do?

Then there are other things too. Is your homepage call to action button placed right? Should it be on the right, left, or center? And is it noticeable enough? Does it show up well on mobile (50% of web traffic is mobile!)? Is the navigation menu helpful?

^ And we’re just getting started.

Failing these would mean you’ll have a high traffic dropoff right on the homepage — confused users will simply leave.

Just the way you need to go from the header to the footer of your website when approaching website branding, you need to see every website branding choice you make through the lens of conversion rate optimization.
Wrapping it up…

If there’s one channel that’s always working to generate business for you, it’s your website.

Think about it: It helps people discover you on the web — it’s often the first touchpoint a user has with your business, your online storefront.

It helps them explore your product or service catalog and nudges them to buy — so it’s like your digital salesforce.

And it also lets them fill out a contact form or even complete a purchase or book a service — so it’s your virtual checkout too.

If you get your website branding right, you can reinforce your brand at all these key points in your users’ online conversion journey. Plus, when you throw in conversion rate optimization to your website branding mix, you get the best results. So take steps to make your brand look its best online with a branded website that also performs. At 2Point, we help B2B and B2C businesses of all sizes look their absolute best online with high-performing websites. Check out our web design services; contact us.