Think of the these three things: a swoosh, a splash of red with a white curve, and golden arches. If you can identify the brands associated with these things, then you understand the power of colors, symbols, and other ways of establishing your identity.
Wear your badge proudly
When you first meet somebody, one of the first things you do is introduce yourself. Without a name, you’re just another face in the crowd. Your site works in much the same way. You want to make sure it’s one of the first things a visitor sees on your page is your brand.
If you don’t introduce your brand first, your page will simply get lost in a sea of other pages. Once you’ve established who you are, then you can start tying other things to that identity; and one of the first things you can do is establish your brand’s colors.
Find your true colors
Try to think of the major courier services in your area. Can you identify the colors of their trucks, packages, and uniforms? Without looking at their logos, can you tell them apart?
Consistent use of colors helps establish your brand’s identity, and can even set you apart from others in your market. We’ve already hinted at two great examples of brands that are intertwined with their colors. A splash of red with a whit curve has most people thirsting for Coca-Cola, and many of us know that golden arches lead to McDonald’s.
By identifying your brand’s colors and sticking with them, you help ensure that your brand and your colors are inextricably tied together. On your site, this means sticking to a color scheme that matches, or at least complements, your brand colors. Choose a background color that fits your brand and format your headers, links, and other text to appropriate colors.
Stay consistent
We’ve hinted at this in the previous paragraph, but consistency isn’t limited to colors. Keeping your logo in the same place across different pages assures your visitors that they’re still on your site. Our blue pepper up top, for example, stays in place wherever you go on our site.
Other things that you probably want to keep in place are navigation bars and other frequently visited links. Most sites have a search bar on the upper right, as well a Privacy Policy and other important links on the bottom. Going back to your logo for a moment, clicking the logo leads back to the home page on most sites.
One other thing that you want to keep consistent is your voice. The Pepper bunch is a lively, bubbly group, and we’d like to think that shows through in our writing too. Your brand may have a different personality, and you want that personality to show up consistently on your website. Even if you have several people writing on your site, you probably want it to feel like there’s only voice coming through.
Introduce yourself
The main idea is that your website should clearly identify your brand. This means more than simply stating your brand name – it means letting your brand’s personality shine through, whether through colors, words, or other cues.
This is part four of Pepper’s Web Usability series. You can check out the other posts in the links below. Before you head off, we’d like to know: how do you highlight your brand’s personality on your site? Share your ideas in the comments section. You can also sign up for our free trial.
- Keep it simple: the basic philosophy for web usability
- Don’t be a snob: make sure that everybody can access your site
- Identify yourself: don’t make it hard to figure out who’s behind your site
- Show me around: make it easy to navigate your site
- Say it, and say it well: make sure you get your message across
About Pepper Virtual Assistants
Pepper Virtual Assistant Services is a business solutions firm that specializes on administrative assistance, customer support, CRM, copywriting, and personal virtual assistance. We take pride in our reliable service and responsive client handling which embodies our team’s optimal performance.
BE CREATIVE!
in this, be creative in showing or identifying yourself. not creative that may look bad at the eye, but being creative in doing articles or blog posts, press releases, website contents that can encourage or gather more individual in viewing thy site. i can say that the title itself is a very eye catching, but what about the content? what’s important is the title and it’s content needed to be interacted with each other and it’s correlation is very important. as i read it, it catches my attention and wanted to read more and more until i finished reading everything that interest me. KEEP IT SIMPLE BUT CREATIVE!