Branding consists of two aspects: the tangible and the intangible:

• The tangible aspect refers to the graphic representations (i.e. the logo and other design elements), colour palette and typography. These are usually manifested by marketing collateral, stationery, signage and other visual materials.
• The intangible aspect encompasses the messaging and the tone of voice in the businesses marketing materials. It is also evident in the behaviour of the people associated with the company.

Both the tangible and intangible aspects of any brand need to be consistent, in order to make a lasting and positive impression. Doing so will help your business earn the trust of your customers and yield the following benefits:

• Improves audience recall – It takes time for customers to get to know and trust your brand. However, seeing the same design elements and messaging throughout various touch points will help customers become familiar with your brand.
• Reinforces your story, messaging and image – Consistent branding will further highlight to your customers what your brand is all about and help them to form impressions of your business that are in line with what you are working to communicate.
• Influences buying behaviour – When customers believe in and share your values, they are far more likely to purchase your products and/or services. Seeing consistent messaging that reflects your business’ values will encourage customers to see your brand for what it is and give them the confidence to trust your business.

With the proliferation of new marketing touch points, maintaining branding consistency across multiple channels is more challenging than ever. However, consistent branding is necessary to earn your customer’s trust and eventually, their loyalty. Below are some ways to ensure consistency across all your customer touch points:

• Ensure that your brand identity is reflected accurately across all marketing channels and/or customer touch points. Each touch point and/or marketing channel should use the same logo, tagline, colours and tone of voice, and should communicate the same brand messages. This will help to leave a visual imprint in the minds of your customers and will foster an emotional connection between them and your brand. In the future, these customers will then easily identify and remember your company.
• Develop a brand book and use it. A brand book contains a detailed description of the brand and its elements, and how to properly utilize them. It serves a guide for designers and writers when they create communication materials. It is also a good reference for employees on how to act in a way that accurately represents the company’s values and personality
• Develop a branding and messaging strategy. Consistent branding across multiple touch points is not easy to demonstrate and requires careful planning. While not a lot of time and energy will be needed to pull off visual consistency across marketing channels and customer touch points (as the graphic representations will be standard), achieving cohesive messaging across these channels can be tedious. It is best to plan ahead.
• Assign a brand ambassador. With all the communications that go out, having someone responsible for ensuring that all outbound communications are in line with the brand will be advantageous to your company. The brand ambassador, usually the Communications Officer, will have the task of meticulously checking whether or not the visual and intangible branding aspects in all marketing materials and other forms of communications reflect the company correctly.
• Develop key messages that reflect your company values and product or service offering. Find out what messages resonate with your audience and the best method of delivering them. It is important to consider your customer’s language and how and where they consume information.

Maintaining consistent branding across all marketing channels and customer touch points are key to first getting the attention of your customers and then, later on, earning their loyalty and advocacy. When creating your outbound communications, it is important to remember that branding consistency goes beyond the mere visual aspects (i.e. logo, tagline, colours palette), and that messages and tone of voice in communications and the behaviour or demeanour of those that represent the company are also just as crucial to the overall branding of a company.

Learn more about how we can help build your Brand Identity and Positioning Strategy here.

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Not only is it about the design of your site in terms of how it looks (although this certainly does come into it), but there are a number of other elements of website design that must be considered when planning a website that will convert well.

Using the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) principles, let’s explore the role that website design plays in driving conversion.

Attention

As mentioned above, you only have ten seconds to grab a user’s attention when they land on your website. First impressions are formed very quickly, and it’s those first 10 seconds that will either lead the user further into the site or turn them away completely. Therefore, the homepage or landing page of a website needs to be eye-catching and engaging enough to convince the user to keep reading.

Interest

Users are only going to stay on a website if they find it interesting. In order to retain a user’s interest, it must be clear to them what value they are getting. It also helps to aim to establish an emotional connection, which can be done when you have a solid understanding of who your target customer is. There is a range of different design strategies that can influence emotional connection, such as strategic use of colour psychology.

Desire

In addition to capturing a user’s attention and sparking their interest, your website should also drive a desire for your product or service. To do this, ensure that your website provides detailed information on what you offer, in a way that is easy to understand and in line with the needs of your target market. People respond better to concise information rather than large blocks of text, which should be reflected in the design of your website. For example, the use of bullets and subheadings, white space and contrasting colours to break up text and help important points to stand out.

Action

Once you have their attention, have sparked their interest and driven them to have a desire for your product or service, you then need to make it as easy as possible for users to take action. Ensure that clear and compelling call to action are located throughout the website so that a user can take action from wherever they are on the site when they make the decision.

How about the actual design characteristics of a website that contribute to driving conversion? Here are 5 key design characteristics that can’t be ignored…

Easy to Navigate

Navigating from one page on a website to another shouldn’t require too much thinking and should feel natural and straightforward for the user. The information on the site will perform better if it is organised logically, considering the target market, what’s important to them and their typical thought process when looking for your product or service. Some best practices in menu navigation include

• Each menu item should be strategically named and must match its contents exactly, making it immediately clear to the user what information they will find by clicking on that menu item.
• The top-level navigation menu should contain no more than eight items to avoid a ‘cluttered’ or ‘crowded’ menu.
• Breadcrumb navigation should be shown on every back page of the site, allowing users to easily retrace their steps and making it easy for them to see where they are within the site.
• A search function will allow visitors to locate the information or product that they are looking for quickly, without having to navigate through multiple pages.
• Consider the use of Mega Menus, particularly if your website is an e-commerce site. Mega Menus allow visitors to get a preview of the product/s without having to go through several pages.

Clear Calls to Action

As mentioned earlier, it must be easy for users to take action on your website. What this action looks like will be highly dependent on your conversion goals (i.e. online purchase, free demo, submit an enquiry, etc.). Clear and compelling call to action prompts should be shown throughout the website, taking into consideration the location within the site and your conversion goals. Below are some tips to ensure your calls to action are effective.

• Use action-oriented text (i.e. ‘Secure Your Reservation’).
• The colour of the call to action should be contrasting to the colour of the background to ensure that it stands out.
• The size of the call to action should be large enough to be noticed but not too large that it becomes off-putting.
• The call to action should be located somewhere eye-catching and in line with typical viewing patterns (users typically view website content in an ‘F’ pattern).

Visual Hierarchy

The content on your website should be organised in a way that prioritises the most important info, ensuring that users don’t miss the key points. There is a science to drawing a user’s attention to the most important information on the page. Some of the principles that guide the positioning of the items on a page include:

• Scanning Patterns – multiple studies have shown that before committing to reading a page, visitors first scan the page in either an F or Z pattern.  
• Size – the most important information is highlighted through size and hence makes it difficult to miss.
• White space – when an item or a text is surrounded by a lot of white space, the eye tends to focus on it.

Use of Colours

Colour affects human emotion and behaviour and can be used to influence users to take action. Therefore, having a solid understanding of who your target market is will allow you to choose the colours that will have a positive sway on their emotions.

Readable Text

Reading the content of your website should not be taxing. Use hierarchy to differentiate the level of importance of the content. To prevent your visitors from getting frustrated, easy to read font and easy to understand text must also be used.

People tend to easily become bored with websites and the design of your website has a huge bearing on whether or not they will continue to explore your website and take action. Having said this, it is also highly important to consider website usability best practices when designing your website, ensuring a positive user experience when interacting with your site.

The post How to design a website that converts appeared first on Reload Consulting.

Of course, ‘conversion’ can mean different things for different businesses. An e-commerce site would consider a conversion to be a sale for example, while a non-e-commerce site would look at conversion as submissions of online request forms, calls to the head office, etc.

The best, sure-fire way to ensure that all elements are considered when developing a new website for your business is to develop a Website Strategy prior to diving into the design and development.

A Website Strategy considers your goals and objectives, conversion goals, markets, customer value propositions and more, combined with industry best practice to create a clear and detailed plan to then provide to the developers.

In many ways, it is a lot like a blueprint. Mapping out wireframes of all key pages and explaining functionality requirements in great detail, which ensures that the developers have a clear roadmap to deliver to you a website that is not only beautiful in terms of design, but also effective in terms of user experience and conversion.

The Infographic above provides a snapshot of what the Website Strategy process looks like from start to finish. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please feel free to get in touch.

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