Branding is an essential part of web design because it gives your business a unique identity online. It also helps build trust with your audience and separates you from the crowd.
Before talking more about the importance of branding in web design, let’s first know what branding is and what it incorporates in web design.
What is Branding?
Branding is about creating a unique identity for a product, service, or company in the minds of consumers.
A business is distinguished from others in the same industry with visual elements like the logo, trademark, typography, color scheme, and design pattern. Together with the quality of products and services, these visual components create the brand identity of a business.
Branding is an opportunity for you to express your vision and purpose. How people will recognize your business depends a lot on your branding.
Some brands are so influential that it is hard to tell when they became a part of our lives. Take a look at these brands. Do they look familiar to you?
What is Website Branding?
Website branding is the process of integrating different branding elements (e.g. logo, typography, illustrations, icons, and color palettes) into your website efficiently.
It’s now essential for any company to have a website for a dominant online presence. If the website fails to reflect your brand values, you’ll have a hard time getting more customers.
An effective website branding strategy can significantly increase your brand equity and help build strong credibility for your business in the long run.
Take a look at the landing page of the website of Adobe – the famous creative software developer. Honestly, they have a mesmerizing user interface.
Importance of Branding in Web Design?
Helps Establish a Unique Character
There are around 200 million websites on the internet where the competition to grab audience attention is fierce. A user will not give your website more than a few seconds to prove its worthiness when they have so many options available.
That means your website will not stand a chance to represent your business if the overall design is not tailored to promote your branding.
A new user comes to your website to get some idea about your business. In a way, your website is as important for your image as your house is for your reputation.
That is why your website design must align with the core values of your business and seamlessly incorporate all the branding elements to make your online presence effective for smooth growth.
Enhances User Experience
Did you see any difference between the websites and the niche sites? There is a big difference so far as user experience is concerned.
The designer incorporates all the good practices of other business sites that offer the same type of service and in addition, they add some unique features to it.
That is how your potential clients can enjoy a better experience at your website for those unique features and there is a good chance that they will become loyal to your brand for the enhanced user experience.
You need to make sure that the designer is not using the brand elements randomly and irrationally to upset the user experience.
Promotes Brand Recognition and Brand Recall
When you think of having a carbonated soft drink, which name comes first in your mind? Coke or Pepsi? When you think of buying an automobile, which brand pops up in your thoughts first? Ford or Toyota?
Brand recognition is the attribute of a brand that tells us how many people can remember a brand when they see the logo and brand recall indicates how often a consumer thinks about a brand while making a purchase.
A website is the ambassador of your business on the net world and when the site earns popularity the brand becomes familiar too.
You can easily influence different social media to ensure a consistent brand presence before the public eye with the help of a website. For that, you should try promoting quizzes, holding online polls, and promoting interesting infographic content.
This video tells you the history of the logo of the tech giant Apple.
Makes Email Marketing Effective
A Mailchimp benchmarking report showed that people open marketing emails in more than 20% of cases. The report also said that emails are much more effective for achieving sales targets than using social media.
Another reason to try email marketing is that it can reduce your marketing budget significantly. A website comes with emailing features that include your business name as the domain. That is also helpful for branding.
A personalized email, which addresses the buyer by name helps create a direct connection too.
Maximizes Social Media & SEO Marketing Outcome
You need to link all the social media pages and forums of your business with your website. It helps to easily get traffic for your website from social platforms.
But there is a catch! It is only possible to convert new users into loyal clients when the website is well-integrated with your branding elements.
You may try to attract a large population by posting both organic and paid posts on social media. Some of the posts will become popular if they have entertaining elements like quizzes and infographics. Another way to grab the attention of social media to your brand is to use online polls on any contemporary topics.
The same goes for SEO marketing. All the organic traffic that you get from search engine optimization, guest posts, and guest blogging will go in vain if the website itself lacks a branded look.
Helps Create Brand Awareness
To put it in simple terms, brand awareness indicates how many people know about the existence of your brand.
A website can increase awareness of the brand by adequately utilizing social media platforms and using different SEO practices.
Blogs are a great way to let people know about the existence of a brand. When people follow the links in the blog to reach your website they become aware of the brand immediately.
Ensure Better Growth
A website can help you increase revenue and return on investment by establishing brand identity, enhancing user engagement, improving user experience, and making your online existence visible.
Your business will grow with the number of buyers of your service or product. That is only possible when your brand is recognized by many people and a website works well in creating more brand awareness.
At the same time, your engagement with your consumers and the overall user experience of your website gets better when it is branded well. A website also helps create a loyal client base.
Gives Your Brand a Personality
Before the Internet, the opportunity for a brand to communicate with its clients was very limited. They had to depend on advertisements and press releases for the newspapers and television.
This new age of communication has been a blessing for companies who had a lot to tell and know. With a website, a company can instantly make direct communication with its targeted users.
As a result, now companies get the chance to show some personality in the public domain, which helps them a lot to earn the trust of the consumers.
All these factors work together to ensure smooth growth for your business.
Elements of Website Branding?
Social Proof
From a marketing point of view, social proof means creating an impression that implies that a lot of people have used your product or services and are happy with it.
You may incorporate social proof into a site by emphasizing the total number of clients you have served so far on a landing page. Another way to do it is to highlight some positive testimonials of your previous clients on the home page.
Social proof is essential for generating a strong sales pipeline for the business and improving a brand’s reputation.
Research on User Experience
Your business website is the brand ambassador for your business. People may judge your firm by their experience with your website and that is why you must ensure a smooth user experience for your website.
At UIexperts, we follow the appropriate methodology of user experience research to design a website to ensure that a user never stumbles while browsing.
Clarity
Website branding must consider adequate clarity both in the user interface and all the back-end operations. If a user fails to understand the functionalities of the site or gets an ambiguous message it will harm the reputation of the firm.
If the navigation system of the website is unclear a user will be lost in the middle of a process and may lose trust in your brand. Sometimes too many texts can confuse a user and make it difficult for them to find the functionalities. That is why you should use an appropriate ratio of text and images.
You need to be meticulous while setting call-to-action elements on a web page. Place them in the right location on the page so that the user does not need to work hard to find his required button.
Backstories
People would love to know the background of the business and your website should not hesitate to feed them little anecdotes about your firm. It can be about the moment you first decided to start the business or about the motivations that led you to set out on the journey.
Tell the user about a few initial failed ventures to make them sympathize with your brand. Backstories will create a relatable image for your enterprise and help the overall branding a lot.
Empathy for the User
You must have a deep knowledge of the possible user groups of the website and have an idea about what made them visit your website. Your website should assure the user that he has come to the right place for a solution to his problem.
It is important to make the user realize in all of their experiences with your website that your business values their satisfaction and is dedicated to offering a solution. The use of empathy in web design will get you many loyal and long-term clients.
Consistency
If you own an old business that possesses some brand values, you should integrate the existing brand elements into the website to keep up the consistency.
If a change in the designs of the brand elements like the logo or tradesmen is inevitable, your designer should stick to the basic design structures.
Tips to Brand Your Website
Design the Logo First
A log is as important to a business as a flag is for a nation and the first thing people remember about a company is the logo.
A logo is the most prominent brand element in the whole branding process and all other visual components of the design should be harmonious with the design of the logo. That is why you should design the logo even before kicking off the design process of a website.
Depending on the age, culture, geolocation, and social status of the target audience you should choose the right logo for your business.
Apply Color Psychology
Colors can play a significant role in establishing engaging communication with the user only if you can choose the right color patterns according to the nature of your business and the personality of your buyers.
A good web designer always follows some basic color theories like the complementary color schemes theory. When designers use two different colors to make the colors complement each other, they are using this color scheme.
Another remarkable aspect of colors is their ability to make an impact on our emotional state. The following image tells us use of what colors can trigger what kind of emotion.
Use the Right Visuals
Images were one of the first means of communication in human history and they are still a great conveyer of messages. Researchers found that our minds can process images many times faster than they can comprehend texts.
Your website must have a lot of visual elements like still images, videos, interactive videos, animations, customized typography, and infographics to make them appealing to the user.
Make them Adaptive & Responsive
When a web designer crafts many versions of designs for the same website he is using the adaptive method of web design. When a user tries to access your website the server detects the type and model of the device and provides a befitting version of the web design for the particular user.
In the responsive web design method, the designer creates only one design for the website and the server detects the display resolution of the device to automatically change the screen size.
Since the overall reach of a website matters a lot in creating brand value, you must try to make the website as platform-independent as possible.
Cost of Website Branding Design
Your budget will vary depending on the level of expertise of the designer and the complexity of the design.
This is a lifetime opportunity for you to build a unique identity for your business, which will bring manifold benefits in the long run. So we would suggest you try to hire the best professional agency for the job.
Depending on the size and experience of an agency, it may cost you between $5000 and $50000+ to build a website. The following table tells you more about it.
| Type of Agency | Average Cost |
| Local Agency | $5,000 – $7,500 |
| Small Agency | $7,500 – $15,000 |
| Mid-Sized Agency | $15,000 – $50,000 |
| Large Agency | $50,000+ |
If you are running short on budget, you may also consider hiring a freelancer to brand your website. In that case, make sure he has the expertise and knowledge of web design.
A freelancer can cost you from $500 to over $5,000. The following table shows the average rate of freelancers depending on their level of expertise.
| Type of Freelancer | Average Cost |
| Offshore Designer | $500 to $10,000 |
| Beginner Freelancer | $1000 to $2500 |
| Experienced Freelancer | $2500 to $5000 |
| Renowned Freelancer | $5000 |
Why Choose UIExpertz to Design Your Website
UIExpertz is here to help you want to be sure that all the finest and latest technologies and ideas are in use for crafting the design.
At UIExpertz, we have developed a failproof method for designing websites which involves in-depth research, appropriate planning, integrating brand elements in the design phase, and multiple tests. The steps of the design are elaborated here.
Step 1: Research
We begin creating a tailored solution for your website by gathering authentic insight into your business, audience, and their needs.
Our experts analyze the websites of your competitor brands to understand the common features that your users will expect in your website.
They brainstorm a lot to find out what unique features can be added to your website considering the brand image in mind.
We take user experience research seriously to ensure a smooth journey for a visitor.
Step 2: Planning
After the research phase, our design planners sit together to plan the web design by utilizing all the insights we get from the research phase.
We create a product roadmap with the different requirements grouped into deliverable milestones.
Step 3: Wireframing
During this design phase, we allocate web page space for different web elements according to their priority level, functionality, and intended behaviors.
We develop wireframes, mockups, and prototypes to finalize the look of the solution.
Step 4: Design
After wireframing comes the design phase where we shape the user interface. Our experts create the compositional, structural, and visual elements of the website in line with the brand identity of your business.
Step 5: Development
Now it’s time to develop your website. Our developers add innovative and unique elements to the website to glorify your brand.
They create the web solution by writing some clean codes that ensure a seamless user experience.
Step 6: QA Testing
UIExpertz does some rigorous quality Assurance tests on the newly developed website to find and eliminate bugs. Our QA testing sessions include functional, performance, regression, integration, and usability testing.
Step 7: Launch
After multiple sessions of QA testing, the website is published for public viewing. We never stop monitoring how the website is behaving while interacting with the users.
More importantly, we keenly observe the satisfaction level of the users to know what improvements the website may need.
Step 8: Support
UIExpertz believes it is only the beginning of our relationship with a client and keeps providing them maintenance and after-sale support.
Bottom Line
Now that you know the importance of branding in web design, you can multiply the chances of success for your business firm if can integrate branding with the design of your website. If you own a startup, it is an opportunity for your firm to start creating a branding identity with the help of the designer.
We hope this blog has helped you understand the importance of integrating your branding values into the web design of your website. Feel free to contact our experts to start designing your own website.
