There’s more to your online shop than just a digital catalogue. As your business scales and grows, your brand must follow suit if you want to remain profitable year-on-year. If your business was a person, your brand is your personality, and that is how you are introducing yourself to new people and building a solid connection with them.
It only takes about 50 milliseconds for a person to form an opinion of your brand from the moment they land on your website. That opinion determines whether they stay or leave.
According to an article from The Cheskin Research & Studio Archetype, as far back as 1999, the six most important factors in building trust for an eCommerce company’s website are (in this order):
- Brand
- Navigation
- Fulfilment
- Presentation
- Modern technology
- Security
So, if a user’s first impression of your website is an inconsistent brand, or a brand that looks like every other website they’ve seen, why would they continue to look at your products or choose you over the competition?
Creating a brand that resonates
To hone the art of creating a good impression, you must create a brand that is irresistibly appealing to customers.
Here is a process you can use to ensure that you consistently stand out from the competition and resonate with your audience:
Trust is a key factor and brand consistency fosters trust
Brand consistency is the ability to deliver consistent messaging and design across all platforms over time. All messages and design elements should be in line with your brand themes, values, voice and mission. Again, we tend to trust people more who don’t change at the drop of a hat, and the same goes for a brand. If you are consistent, you are more likable and dependable.
Brand consistency also makes your business easily recognised, which means our customers will immediately start thinking about you when they see your marketing – without even being asked to make a purchase. When you make your customers feel like they know, depend on, and trust your brand, they are much more inclined to hit the ‘buy now’ button.
Establishing brand consistency
To create brand consistency that is on par with the bestselling brands, you need to nail the following:
In order to maintain a consistent brand, the single most important thing you can do is develop a set of brand guidelines that outline every aspect of your brand strategy that include your logo, colour scheme, tagline, typography and key messaging. Every employee who creates visual or written content for the brand should adhere to these guidelines at all times, across all channels.
How a compelling brand increases sales
Not only are customers more likely to buy from brands they trust, they are willing to pay more for their products as well.
On average, brands with stronger reputations offer a 31% higher shareholder return, enjoy a growth rate that’s three times faster that their competitors and a 31% greater revenue growth over a three year period compared to lesser brands.
Brand presence
It’s all very well and good having a bulletproof set of brand guidelines, but unless you are showcasing your brand in the right places, nobody will know you are there. A great social media presence is necessary for tangible e-commerce results.
According to data from BigCommerce, online stores with a strong social media presence have an average of 32% more sales than those who don’t use, or are not active, on social media. And 85% of orders from social media sites come from Facebook (Shopify).
But bear in mind: quality over quantity.
Focus on the social media channels that your customers use instead of what’s trending, make sure you have capacity to reply to user questions, comments and reviews and consider partnering with micro-influencers to reach your target audience cost effectively.
Conclusion
As an ecommerce retailer, your goal is to get more sales daily, and the key to more sales is a strong brand. While there are many different marketing channels that can help, if your brand is inconsistent, your values are unclear or you simply look exactly like your competitors, you will fall to the bottom of the ROI food chain quickly.
At teclan, our branding team has years of experience crafting compelling brands for eCommerce retailers that boost sales, and we would love to do the same for you.
Get in touch with us today to find out, for free, what you could achieve with amazing branding.
