5 Tips to align your branding and website design

We live in an inconsistent world, filled with inconsistent people, but I think we can all agree that there are a few things that should ALWAYS remain consistent. Take for instance, your company’s branding and website design. These two items should work together to communicate a cohesive brand that has a consistent message.

Here are our 5 tips on how to make sure your branding and website design are perfectly aligned:

1. Keep your brand message consistent

To build a strong brand message you need to make it memorable. What do you do to make people remember something? You repeat it.

Once you’ve got a killer brand message that accurately reflects your company values, be sure you repeat it. Everywhere. It should infuse all of your branding materials, from your advertising, to your social media posts.

Your website is a great platform to really drive your brand messaging home, so make sure that what you communicate on your site matches the messaging you’ve used elsewhere across your brand. This will not only create familiarity and trust with your customers, but will support your sales team’s efforts too.

2. Make sure the design of your branding and website match

It’s easy to see when someone’s outfit clashes (except for when it’s Noel Fielding; I mean, that guy can pull anything off), but it’s not always as obvious when your company’s branding and website don’t match, especially from the point of view of someone inside your organisation. For your customers on the other hand, it can be pretty blatant.

Imagine that the well-designed graphics in a Youtube advert catch your attention, and entice you to visit the company’s website. The site loads but you’re not sure you’re in the right place. Whereas the advert was slick and modern, the site looks like something straight out of the 90’s. The colours aren’t even the same!

You may have had a similar experience and it probably left you feeling confused. Don’t do the same to your customers. Make sure the logo, colours, fonts, and photography used on your website are consistent with what has been applied elsewhere across your branding.

(Happy with your branding but feel like your site doesn’t quite make the cut? Don’t worry, we got you: How to rebrand a website in 10 easy steps).

Branding design by BP&O

3. Add your brand personality to your website

You should be able to describe your brand’s personality in a sentence. Is it eco-friendly, responsible, and informed? Or perhaps your brand is cheeky and likes to make fun of itself? Either way, you’ve got to make sure that your website has the same personality as the rest of your brand materials.

A brand’s personality can be communicated both verbally, and non-verbally. It’s a copywriter’s job to nail down the verbal character of your brand (by writing awesome copy and catchy headlines), and a designer’s job to add personality non-verbally (through illustrations, animations, or even through font selection).

Make sure the language and design used on your website reinforce the personality communicated across other marketing channels.

4. Keep your website up to date

It’s true, there’s nothing worse than a hair in your Cobb salad. When it comes to branding however, there’s nothing worse than an outdated website. For some reason this seems to happen a lot. You hear that your favourite brand has a new special, so you rush over to their site to check it out. But what do you find? An eye-sore of a site that appears to have last been updated around the turn of the century. So disconcerting.

Not only is it confusing to customers when a website doesn’t match the rest of a company’s branding, but what’s worse is that it can undercut the credibility of your entire brand. An outdated website can make customers think that a brand is untrustworthy (“Are they still in business? Will I receive products I order on the online store?”)

The good news is that it’s easy to keep your site updated nowadays, especially if it’s built with a simple-to-use tool like Squarespace (our personal favourite when it comes to website builders). You just need to be diligent about logging in, and updating your content on a regular basis.

5. Make sure your website and social media work together

An article about branding is not complete without a section about social media. It’s an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly, and can mean the difference between a thriving brand, and a brand that was long since forgotten.

The great thing about social media is that it goes hand-in-hand with just about any marketing effort, and your website is no exception. Social platforms can be powerful drivers of traffic to your site, so it’s important that your social media presence is consistent with your website in terms of design, tone, and content. This will create a sense of cohesion, giving your customers a good impression of your brand as they navigate between the platforms.

Conclusion

The line between a company’s branding and its website design is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish, especially with the surge in digital marketing over the last decade or so. That said, without properly aligning your website design with your branding, it’s still easy to create a jolting experience for your customers. Avoid this faux pas by following the 5 simple steps above, and we’re confident that you won’t go wrong!

If you don’t have a site yet, you may be wondering where to begin. Because we like to make things easy for you, we’ve laid out the steps in our Marketing Manager’s 10 Step Guide to Website Design. Check it out!