The Sounding Board

Should you decide to rebrand...

I’ve always been interested in branding and Web design, and over the years I’ve noticed that trying times and prosperous times alike can lead a company to re-evaluate or reaffirm its existing brand—specifically its online brand, since it’s usually the customer’s channel-of-choice—to stay competitive.

During trying times — like during a recession — a company may need to tweak or upgrade its existing brand to restore credibility, illustrate a change in leadership structure, or to represent any expanded product and/or service offerings. During prosperous times — like when two companies merge — a total rebrand may be needed to expunge existing brand identity and replace it with a completely new look and message.

Whatever your company’s position during the current state of the economy, should you decide to rebrand and launch a new online presence note the value of consistency and simplicity in your design.

Consistency. Keep the location and appearance the same throughout your site. A unified, cohesive site makes your company appear organized and professional, enhancing credibility.

• Navigation. Determine an intuitively simple navigation scheme, and stick with it. If your site is hard to use, visitors will leave. A well-constructed pathway through your site will create familiarity, increasing the number of return visitors and page impressions.

• Images. “Pictures speak 1,000 words,” so make sure whatever it is they’re saying is not only representative of your messaging and theme, but also your products and/or services.

Simplicity. Keep it neat and simple—simple ideas are easier to remember.

• Search Function. Have you ever gone to a site looking for something in particular and left because you couldn’t find it? Similar to navigation, providing a search function on your site it essential. Information needs to be easily found, and if visitors can’t find it they’ll leave and go looking somewhere else. In like fashion, don’t “hide” your contact information. Closeting your contact information not only makes visitors skeptical about the legitimacy of your site, it can also severely damage your conversion rate—the phone won’t start ringing if people don’t know whom to call.

• Copy. “People don’t read they scan; they don’t research they surf” (I have no idea where I read and/or heard that). People also don’t like to scroll, so don’t overwhelm visitors with long blocks of copy they can’t digest. Keep information and messaging clear, compelling, concise, and whenever possible use headlines, subheads, and bullets, and take advantage of “white space”—it makes the message stand out and the site easier to scan. And, if you must incorporate a scroll bar, put the most important information above the fold.

• Animation. Keeping your site fresh and up to date is a must, however incorporating Adobe Flash Player into every component of your site doesn’t make your company and/or its products appear that much more "innovative." Overusing expressive features and elements of motion can distract visitors from your content, not to mention annoy them. However, utilizing Flash elements in good taste, in the appropriate areas can significantly enhance the quality of a site.

-Lisa Wells