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by Catherine Kaputa
If clients and prospects don't tell you that you've got a great website, you need to go back to the drawing board. Because your website is just too powerful a branding and selling tool to leave to chance. Your website is an opportunity to create a powerful brand impression for new prospects. Or leave them baffled or, even worse, disinterested in your business and what you offer. After all, a website is the first place most potential customers go to check out your company before they make a call or purchase. And first impressions are critical. Research shows that the first impression people have of someone or something is the same as the lasting impression. If it's well designed and informative, a website is a low-cost way to build brand awareness and drive sales. Here are 5 branding tips to follow in creating a successful website: 1. Get the best domain name available. What's in a name? A lot. For marketers, the most important brand decision is the company or product name. And a name is doubly important on the internet because if the name and web address are easy to remember and spell, you'll get a lot more traffic, and the neame will be easier to spread by word of mouth. If you're starting a new business, the availability of the domain name should be an important part of the selection criteria. (When my company, SelfBrand, is working on names for new businesses and products, we check domain name availability before we make a recommendation.) If you have an existing business and the corresponding domain name is taken, you'll need to use a little creativity to turn it into a good domain name. For example, one client's business name was already taken by another company in a different business, so for the web address we added the business category (for example, ABC company became www.abctoys.com). . Avoid odd spellings and other hard-to-remember devices in creating a domain name. For example the use of an "&" can be a problem because people won't know whether to use "and" or "&". Notice that Barnes & Noble Booksellers uses www.bn.com for its web address. If you have to continually spell the name of your website address, you know you have a problem. 2. Create a distinctive "brand" look for your site. View your website as a compelling "package" for your business brand like brand managers do in crafting the package design and advertising for their products. Your website should have a distinct brand look and design that is different from your competitors. That's why it's important to avoid template designs. Hire a talented web designer who has created websites that look good and are different from each other. Check to make sure they work well in terms of navigation and providing good content. Use a signature color for your website if you want to make that part of your brand like UPS brown, Cingular orange, Coke's red or American Express blue. 3. Have a different message. The cardinal rule of branding is to be different. Your home page not only presents a different brand look, it should have a compelling message -- your Unique Selling Proposition -- what's different and relevant about your business and why that is important to customers and prospects. The copy on your home page and throughout your website should thematically tie in with your USP. Make sure that what you say and how you say it is different from your competitor, and povide a lot of content that demonstrates "proof points" to your USP.. 4. Hook them on special content, offers, interactive surveys and games. The web is a great way to build a relationship with clients and prospects. Offer special reports, offers, new articles, special games with rewards to encourage a lot of interaction with your website. Pepper the special content throughout your site., and monitor what's pulling and what isn't. 5. Create a Brand Personality. Smart brand marketers think in terms of creating a distinct and engaging brand personality for their products. For example, ad agencies write up a brand personality for a brand before they start working on creative for television and print ads. The brand personality can be a statement of adjectives that convey human personality traits or it can be a short profile that describes the brand almost as if it were a person. The objective is to help the creative people develop the best advertising that conveys the essence of a brand. You should do the same for your business. The web is a great place to start. Don't settle for a dull corporate look and formal business style of writing unless that is the personality you want to convey. Think in terms of talking directly to a customer or clients. When you're less formal, you'll be more successful in engage your web audience with a more conversational style. Provide engaging profiles of the key people in your business, the company philosophy, and how you do business. All this is a form of emotional branding -- forming emotional not just business ties with your customers and prospects.
Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist and author of U R a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com). She is founder of SelfBrand, a brand consultancy that works with companies, products, and individuals (www.selfbrand.com).
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