Compelling Benefits of Branding Your Website

Building a brand is a multifaceted endeavor. Branding goes beyond color schemes and logo styles to incorporate emotions, values, and customer behaviors. In essence, a brand is the subconscious connection point between a business and its customers.

In our digital world, lacking an online presence isn’t an option. One’s website often acts as the face of the business, whether someone reaches it organically through a search engine or via social media.

10 compelling benefits of branding your website to better connect with your ideal customer

1. Builds Brand Awareness

The strongest brands are recognizable without seeing the business name. You recognize them by the brand logo design, typography, and color palette.

You remember the Nike swoosh or the classic Coca-Cola script, even when presented out of context. That’s brand awareness and recognition at its best.

Having strong brand elements on your site will help create that level of recognition with your target audience. Say, for example, a visitor to your website remembers a valuable piece of content but can’t remember where they saw it.

After clicking through a few search results, they get back to your page and recognize the colors, fonts, and theme the moment the page loads.

Incorporating your branding onto your site gives your prospects something to remember. As it can take multiple visits to your site before the customer feels comfortable transacting, this subtle touch can create familiarity and trust as you nourish your sales funnel.

2. Creates a Strong First Impression

You only have one chance to make a first impression when a new visitor navigates to your website. What do you want that first impression to be? The modern consumer knows how easy it is to create a website in our digital world.

You don’t require advanced development skills or graphic design expertise. As such, there’s an expectation that even the most basic website will look functional and professional.

Use branding as a tool for making an impact on new visitors to your website. These elements tell a potential customer what your business is all about, often at a subconscious level.

For example, if you go to the Pepsi website, you’re immediately faced with the iconic blue and red color scheme, the logo, and the fun, whimsical font associated with the brand.

If you go to the UPS website, you’ll see a background in the softened version of UPS brown with bold yellow buttons. Why brown? So you’ll never see dirt on one of their delivery drivers or vehicles, creating a feeling of cleanliness and professionalism.

3. Creates a Sense of Value

Put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for a professional service. Imagine you’ve been following a consultant on social media who shares valuable content.

Then, you navigate to their site, and it looks like something thrown together last minute with little care or thought. Are you going to give them your money? Most people would be hesitant to do so.

Incorporating branded design elements provides an opportunity to build trust leading to transactions. It also presents a form of cohesion and professionalism that silently conveys to customers that you are the real deal.

If you’re hoping to charge a premium for your offering, your website should look well-executed and professionally designed.

Does that mean you need a professional designer? No. There are plenty of themes available that can create a structure and flow for your website. Use these and add customized fonts, colors, and logos to make it your own.

4. Sets the Emotional Tone

Making a purchase is a decision rooted in emotion. Brand elements set the tone for how you want customers to feel as they consume your content and navigate your website.

For example, you might use white and neutral shades with a delicate font to create a sense of calm and relaxation. This strategy would work well for a spa or counseling service.

Conversely, you might use bright shades of yellow and pink with funky fonts to energize your website’s visitors, helping them feel ready to have fun or take charge of their lives. This strategy would work well for a creative business or event business.

Using brand elements will help put your customers in an ideal mindset for engaging with your product or service. Remember that branding goes beyond colors and fonts, and also includes the tone and phrasing you use in communications.

5. Helps Attract Qualified Leads

The brand identity creation process requires diving into your ideal customer’s behaviors and motivations. Everything you create from your business should resonate with your ideal customer.

Thus, incorporating branding into your website will spark a connection with the people who are most likely to use your product or services.

Consider a resume-building and career coaching service that targets executive men. Having a website with a comic sans font and floral backgrounds likely won’t resonate.

Conversely, creating a daycare website with Times New Roman and professional shades of navy and gold probably won’t attract parents who want their kids to experience a fun, enriching environment.

The more your website appeals to your target demographic, the more likely you will attract qualified leads.

6. Brands Provide Design Guidelines

Creating a website can be overwhelming, even with a great theme to start from. It’s easy to get absorbed in endless options or overthink various elements.

Having a brand to work from can help remove distractions and clarify the path ahead, creating strong design guidelines. These will serve as a valuable reference point whether you are putting the website together yourself or outsourcing to a developer.

7. Attracts Top Talent

Beyond attracting qualified leads, a brand acts as a connection point for attracting top talent to work with your organization.

When you put up a job posting, many job seekers will navigate to your website to learn more about your business. What they find there may determine whether they continue with the application.

Colors and fonts set the emotional tone for the business, but it’s also worth incorporating other brand details, like your core values and mission statement. Dive into your company culture, your business’s connection with the community, and what you offer those who work with you.

Even when the job market is tough, highly-skilled professionals typically have several options when looking for a new job. Think of your website as a way to connect with both customers and potential employees.

8. Creates Consistency Across Channels

Modern businesses often take an omnichannel approach to connecting with customers. As consistency is the key to successful branding, incorporating your brand into your website presents a sense of cohesion from one channel to the next.

For example, when your customers click through your Instagram profile to your website, they should know they’re in the right place based on the similar styles, colors and fonts. Ideally, your social media posts will look similar to your website and vice versa.

Consistency also speaks to a high level of professionalism and reliability. It conveys dedication to creating a strong business presence, which helps mitigate the feeling of risk when making a purchasing decision.

9. Assists With New Product Launches

Having an established, branded website will make things easier when it’s time to expand and grow. Having these elements in place will provide design guidance for advertisements.

The added trust and reliability will translate into a new product offering as your branding has already contributed to building customer relationships.

Many businesses use a presale or launch sign-up format to build hype and create structure around a product launch. Having a branded website on which to build a marketing landing page will help facilitate the product or service launch while relying on the benefits listed above.

10. Aids With Differentiation From Competition

Finally, your website is a platform to differentiate yourself from the competition. Your business should have a defined USP — a unique selling position or point.

It’s a feature or difference that sets you apart from competitors. For example, if you sell groceries, what makes you different from the store across the road? Is it your robust loyalty program, your low prices, your commitment to sustainability, or some combination of the above?

Dedicating time and energy to creating a branding website will also help you gain more traction online compared to your competitors.

If your main competitor has a branded website, you can’t afford not to. If your competition is lacking a strong brand presence, this is your opportunity to highlight your superiority.

A branded website with intentional keywords and information can also enhance your search engine optimization (SEO). In other words, the quality of your website improves how you rank when someone searches for a term relevant to your business. Even your brand name can impact how you rank on Google.

Final Thoughts

If you’re in the process of building a new website or your existing site is overdue for a refresh, consider how you can make it more aligned with your brand.

If you have yet to intentionally develop a brand and consider the various features that make up your business identity, it’s time to prioritize this essential business activity.

Having a branding website will help you connect with customers, stand apart from the competition, build brand awareness, and attract top talent.