Why does good online branding increase sales?

What exactly does strong online branding deliver?

Does strong web design yield more conversions? Provided you really translate it from your brand into an online presence, it can generate up to 23% more sales compared to brands that don’t, Demand Metric research shows.

Having a website created and designed can be done in many ways. There are good and bad web designs online and this has nothing to do with taste. It has everything to do with expectations and the complexity of your web design.

Our design principles come entirely from our accumulated knowledge, insights and research. Today we share our vision on how to translate your brand into a web design. And why just a “pretty web design” is not enough.

Trust and credibility

You have a website created with a purpose. Whatever the goal, you want to exude trust and credibility with your website. The better you do this the better you achieve the goal. Standford did an extensive survey of 2684 consumers and over 75% indicated that website design determines credibility.

So we can say with certainty that web design influences trust, and trust influences conversion. So the next question is what makes design good, and how can we maximize this trust?

What makes a web design good?

Websites with little visual complexity and that fit well with the visitor’s expectation score highest on attractiveness. These two factors influence judgment as early as 17 ms.

A study was done in 2012 by Google in collaboration with the University of Basel. This was about the role of visual complexity, recognizability and understanding aesthetic judgments. In other words; how do we judge what is good web design.

Gebuikers prefer Web sites with lower visual complexity and high prototypicality. Prototypicality roughly means how much something meets expectations. Web designs that do not work as expected (e.g., no typical navigation) thus give a suboptimal first impression according to this research.

So websites with low prototypicality are often seen as less attractive and also have a lower conversion rate because people drop out more quickly.

Lower visual complexity means that the website is not too busy and that there is only one thing happening on a page each time. So if we apply a lot of animation work in a website, we chop it up to create calmness and overview.

Brand value

So we know that consistently communicating your brand generates an average of 23% more sales compared to inconsistent branding. Indeed, a Statista study (consumer trust & brand consistency) found that 81% of consumers do not trust brands that communicate inconsistently [in image and text].

So your brand has a lot of value that you want to bring out in your web design. We see that as an important part of the web design process. It’s about more than your colors, fonts and a neat website. It’s about a logical extension of your brand in an online presence that tells your brand story. We see that as visual storytelling.

User Experience

Of course, great Web design is not the only thing that makes a good Web site. A user experience that matches a customer’s search leads to a successful website visit. Therefore, in addition to web design, UX is also a very important component. Not the focus of this article, but I like to include it as a sidenote.

For example, clear call to actions and conversion moments are important as is responsive design. So the website must be logically laid out and work on any device the visitor uses to visit your website.

Web design is strategy

Web design is not a matter of taste, but of strategy. Those who fully translate their brand story into a sharp, recognizable web design increase trust and conversion.

Sources:

• https://d2slcw3kip6qmk.cloudfront.net/marketing/press/webinar/The-Impact-of-Brand-Consistency-Report-New_Cover.pdf
• https://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/
• https://www.marq.com/blog/brand-consistency