Website Design and Branding

The Internet is a very visual medium. A site visitor’s initial, and often determining, impression, is based on the site’s visual appeal. Most users make their decisions about a site within seconds of seeing the design of the home page. Opinion based on content and site features comes only after visual judgments.

Design and branding are therefore, of great importance to a business site’s success. While a site may provide terrific content and helpful features, it is the site design and branding that establish a company’s online image.

Online Company Branding And The Logo

If a company brand logo is well-established offline, it makes sense to use the same logo when developing an online presence. Why start from scratch with new branding for online use if the company logo is already easily recognizable? If however, a company does not have an established logo or branding presence, hiring a professional graphic designer to create a logo and incorporate it in the website’s overall design is advisable. After it is designed, it’s helpful to ask yourself, “Does our company’s logo send the right message about our company? Does it get across what we are trying to convey?”

The company logo should have pride of place on your site’s home page, but not to the extent of crowding out navigation tools and information. White space around the company logo attracts the eye to the design. The company logo should be visible on all pages, but never as conspicuously as on the home page. Some sites use the company logo as the home page link on their navigational features, bringing the logo to the user’s attention every time they click back to the home page.

Website Design and Color Palettes

The colors and style of a business website should reflect the company logo. Consistency within the website reinforces company branding and makes navigation of the site easier. Different font sizes, colors, images and the positioning of text and images should all reinforce the message sent by the company brand.

Don’t forget the importance of white space to website design. White space, or negative space, is the empty area between logos, text, images, and other content. Musicians claim that music is as much about the silences between the notes as the notes themselves. The same is true of white space. White space focuses the eyes on a page’s different elements.

Page Layout and Eye Tracking

Site layout is an important aspect of design, and influences how effectively a company brand works. Cram too many images, font styles, colors, and interactive buttons on a page and visitors become confused and are likely to leave the site. Use too simple a layout and visitors have difficulty seeing any structure, and once again, are likely to go elsewhere. A good layout strikes a middle ground between these two options. An effective layout creates patterns that the user can follow to navigate the site, and gives the site a solid structure.

It’s important to consider eye tracking when laying out a webpage. Studies indicate that people’s eyes scan WebPages, rather than reading every word of text and viewing every image. This explains why people so often make judgments of websites based on visual criteria. If the right elements are in the right places, the user notices them while his or her eye tracks across the page, and the user is then likely to look beyond page layout and start to see text and information.

Understanding eye tracking is an art in itself, and a concept that a good website designer should understand. Speaking broadly, users scanning a webpage focus on large text at the top of the page first, and then focus on the center of the page.

Navigation and Interactive Features

Company branding is influenced by how a business chooses to incorporate images, interactive features, and navigation tools into a website. Navigational buttons should be intuitive. Users should be able to quickly grasp how to move through the site. Many online symbols have become internationally recognizable, and can be used for easy navigation.

Create a Style Sheet

Consistency is vital to website design and company branding. To this end, it’s advisable to create a website style sheet (sometimes called “Bibles” by designers), that details such elements as color palettes, fonts, and page layout. The style sheet should also dictate when and where company branding should appear on the webpage, the system of site navigation, and how often images should be used. The combination of a well-designed company logo with a complementary color palette and website layout creates and reinforces company branding.