A Practical Guide to Online Branding

Most businesses putting up a website in 1999 treated it as a digital brochure and stopped there. That’s a mistake. The web is becoming a place where customers form their first impression of a company, often before they ever call or walk into a store, and a sloppy or inconsistent site undoes years of offline brand-building in seconds. Here are seven concrete strategies for building a brand online that holds up.

1. Secure a domain name that matches your brand

With commercial domain registration only a few years old, good names are disappearing fast. A domain that matches your business name (not a workaround like “buyacme-online.com”) is worth paying for now, because a mismatched or confusing address undermines every other branding effort. Print it on business cards, storefronts and print ads so people associate one address with your name.

2. Keep your visual identity consistent

Web design tools are still primitive and most sites are built by whoever is available, which is exactly why consistency is rare and valuable. Use the same logo, colors and typefaces on your site that appear on your letterhead and packaging. A visitor who has seen your print ads should recognize your website instantly, and vice versa.

3. Design for the connection people have

Most visitors are on a 56k dial-up modem, not a corporate T1 line. A brand built around a beautiful but slow-loading site is a brand nobody experiences, because impatient visitors leave before the page finishes rendering. Keep images small and pages simple. A fast, plain site beats a slow, elaborate one every time.

4. Build trust the way a new medium requires

Buying from an unfamiliar company online is still a leap of faith for most people, given how new e-commerce is. Publish a real street address and phone number, state your return policy plainly and use a recognized security indicator (the padlock icon) on any page that asks for payment information. These aren’t decoration; they are the reason a stranger decides to trust you.

5. Get your name listed correctly everywhere

Search still runs largely through human-edited directories like Yahoo’s, alongside crawler-based engines like AltaVista, Excite and Lycos. Submit your site to each with the same business name, description and category every time. Inconsistent listings confuse the directories and dilute the brand impression you’re trying to build.

6. Use email to stay in front of people

A visitor who leaves your site today may never find it again; bookmarks get lost and addresses get forgotten. Ask for an email address in exchange for something useful (a catalog update, a notice when new stock arrives) and send a simple, well-branded newsletter on a predictable schedule. It’s the cheapest way to turn a one-time visitor into someone who recognizes your name months later.

7. Make good on what your brand promises

None of the above matters if the actual experience of doing business with you doesn’t match it. If your site promises fast service, your order fulfillment and email replies need to be fast. A brand is ultimately judged by whether reality matches the promise, and word about the gap between the two travels fast on forums and mailing lists.

Putting it together

None of these seven moves require a large budget. What they require is discipline: picking a name and identity and holding to it everywhere your business shows up, being honest about trust and policies and using the tools available (directories, email) to stay visible after the first visit. The businesses that treat their website as a serious extension of their brand, rather than an afterthought, are the ones that will be remembered once the current wave of new websites settles into something ordinary.