Key Tips to Strengthen Your Brand Identity Through Consistent Web Design
While “good” web design can include many things, consistency is the one thing it should always have. Online businesses these days typically operate over multiple channels, including their own e-commerce site, third-party marketplaces, and possibly even dedicated mobile apps. No matter where your business is, your customers must always be able to recognise it at a glance.
Without consistency, it becomes significantly harder for your customers to trust you. Not necessarily because they think you’re sketchy but because they simply don’t understand what to make of you when they see you. Once every landing page, call to action, social media profile, and touchpoint is aligned with your visual brand, you can expect your credibility and conversions to improve.
Let’s be clear — maintaining consistency across your entire online presence isn’t easy. Setting your brand apart in all the right ways requires finesse and an intimate understanding of your market. If you primarily deal with a domestic audience, engaging with web design services in New Zealand can give you better results than more generic solutions.
That said, once you’ve got the right people, it’s time to get down to business. Let’s break down some key ways you can use consistent web design to strengthen your brand.
1. Start With Your Story and Brand Values
Before you fix your web design, you need to have a solid definition of what your brand is all about. This may mean revisiting your brand’s story and its reasons for existing. If your business has been around a while, you’ll also need to look at what your customers feel about your business. Once you’ve fully defined your brand, making the right web design decisions will become so much easier.
2. Create a Visual Identity System
Your logo, colours, icons, and other visual elements should form a defined system. They should never be just a random mix of things you fancy. Pick consistent shapes, styles, and layout patterns across all your online and offline assets so that you can build and maintain a familiar user experience wherever you go.
These elements can’t be just “close enough” either. For instance, you want to use the exact same colours and font systems across your entire brand, not just things that look similar. All these choices must be compiled into a brand guidelines document, and any updates should be intentional. This brings us to our next tip.
3. Be Intentional With Your Brand Fonts and Colours
Fonts and colours are more than aesthetic choices, since they can also evoke very specific emotions. What’s more, fonts and colours are front and centre in your copy and web design, possibly even more than your logos.
As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to choose a small set of colours and fonts and use them consistently. Work with experienced designers so that your choices pass readability and accessibility tests that won’t get in the way of your conversions.
4. Use Repetition Without Being Repetitive
The goal here is to build “visual familiarity” without being dull or fatiguing your audience. We already mentioned using the same fonts and colours, but this also applies to other visual elements that you might use online. Keeping consistent patterns, iconography, or layout blocks can make different parts of your site feel connected, which ultimately builds recognition and trust in your brand.
5. Develop a Copy Writing Style That Matches Your Visual Design
Copywriting and visual design must be able to fit like a glove. At the most basic, your web copy should avoid the dreaded “wall-of-text” effect commonly seen on amateur websites. When in doubt, go with clear, concise copy and a tone that matches your visual elements’ personality.
6. Prioritise the Typical User Experience (UX)
If you have a traditional brick-and-mortar business, building your brand identity can be a straightforward affair. People might walk into your shop and buy something just because it looks nice or the ambience seems right. Online businesses, however, have slightly different concerns. You’ve got a fraction of a second to make an impression before a visitor clicks off to your competitor.
While you do want a good-looking site, it’s best to first focus on proven UX elements like site speed, navigation, and CTAs. Consistency in these areas avoids frustration, makes things easier to find, and creates a sense of comfort, boosting both trust and conversions. At the end of the day, no one ever complained about a website being “too easy to use.”
7. Design With Mobile Responsiveness in Mind
While websites are usually designed and coded on desktops, most users access them over mobile devices. Even in cases where customers convert over desktop, chances are they first found and explored the site over their mobile devices. Knowing that, make sure your site design adjusts elegantly to different screens so that it maintains consistent visuals and performance. If you also have a mobile app, the user interface and visual design should also be fully aligned with your web experience.
We’ll Make Your Brand’s Pieces Fit—From Logo to Landing Page
Brand identities are more than just logos or standard sets of colours. If businesses were people, brand identities would be their personalities. As with real people, personalities matter a great deal for everything from making good first impressions to owning a conversation.
Of course, brand identities often need to do much more. They need to convince people to hand over their money. Not an easy feat when there are now millions of other businesses trying to do the same. Bring the technical aspects of web design to the mix and things start to get really dicey.
Author Digital can help you overcome these challenges, leaving you with a brand identity and web design language that works for your business and its customers. We build systems that fuse design, strategy, and performance, so your leads don’t just admire your website, they turn into loyal brand advocates. Contact our team to discuss what’s next in your branding and web design journeys.
A note
Henry Blackwell
Henry Blackwell is a marketing professional. He has spent the last 10 years working in-house and within agencies, growing profitable businesses through brand and customer-centric digital marketing in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
“My approach to marketing is a combination of heart and head. My heart brings an empathetic and intuitive approach to deeply understanding the qualitative requirements of marketing that many simply do not care to do. My head brings an analytical mindset that leverages data-driven insights to deliver profitable performance for the businesses I work with.
This skill set allows me to deliver systematic customer acquisition, conversion, and retention.”
– Director