You want a new website? OK, then tell me, what is your brand and where is it going?
When a business decides to go ahead with a major web redesign, it’s generally because the current site no longer meets some or many critical needs. It may be out of date, it may lack certain features, but generally the biggest issue is that the website does not properly represent the brand.
A business decides to update its website look and feel. It may also want to update the functionality and utility of the site. So what are the requirements? What are the goals of the redesign?
It’s pretty common to approach this as more of a visual design discussion. But that approach can and often does lead to critical failures in the redesign process. These failures can cost time and money. They can undermine your marketing efforts and become a drag on sales. One of the biggest hidden cost of a failed web redesign is the affect can have on brand perception.
Your brand is not your logo, your design or your tag-line. These are elements of brand. But your brand is ultimately a reflection of market perception. Your brand is built by how people perceive it and more importantly how they feel about it.
Do great brands like Apple and Nike make great products? Yes… but they also create good feelings that translate to intense brand loyalty.
So what does this have to do with your website? Beyond the logo and tagline, the web presence is a connecting point for people to interact with your brand. In a sense it is a key emotional experience for people to feel that they are directly interacting with your brand. Yes websites are intangible, but so are brands. So in a sense the web can feel like a real way of touch the brand. If the website annoys your customer, the customer feels that the brand annoyed them. If the web site helps the customer get what they want and provides a good experience, then positive feelings of that interaction are applied to the brand.
But what about marketing? What about direct sales? What about B to B? What about customer service and self-service apps? Yes, these are all critical components of many web experiences. These are also critical touch-points for the brand.
So what is your brand? You think you know, but do you? Is your brand strategy up-to-date? Does it mirror your business strategy and corporate culture? Does it fit your current or future customer base? Does it fit with your critical business partners?
A brand can be a moving target. Does that mean that you delay a critical web update for a year of navel gazing? Hopefully not. But it does mean that the requirements for the redesign should be seen as more than a design brief.
They should be viewed as a set of product requirements for the website, as a series of digital products that represent the brand. The look and feel of the site is a kind of product. The organization and prioritization of the site are kinds of products. The major functional features that connect customers with services are kinds of products. Interfaces to major corporate applications are kinds of products. The development of social media components and new applications are also kinds of products.
The key takeaway from this discussion should be that the web redesign is far more than an exercise in visual design or creative marketing. It is one of the key touch points for your brand.
We will continue this discussion in future posts.
