Most successful organizations do a great job of identifying, clarifying, and communicating what makes them unique in terms of not only their services or products, but also their culture and organizational personality.
They create and consistently adhere to what we call a brand ID. Now when designing an effective site, you really want to have a strong grasp of that brand ID and I’m not talking only about colors and fonts here, but also elements such as how you help clients and why, what is it that you do in your communication style. So the answer to that is what we call a digital brand guide.
What is a Digital Brand Guide?
A digital brand guide is the key to helping organizations clarify their brand ID and here’s some of the components it includes. First of all, why does the organization exist, its mission, its values, its beliefs, what is the organization all about? What is the primary service where they excel at? What are their core competencies?
Also the how part in terms of the value proposition. What separates your company from other companies in terms of the service or products that you provide? The who in terms of your target market audience, clearly defining who your target market is. Also, you want to make sure that’s part of a digital brand guide to do some competitive position.
In other words after you’ve identified the key features that your visitors or prospects, your clients are looking for, how do you stack up or map out on grid compared with your competitors. And finally what is your brand voice and style of communication? Is it informal, is it more formal, is it fun?
Why A Digital Brand Guide is Essential
It’s all important to map this all out in your digital brand guide and here’s why when you’re designing a site a digital brand guide is essential. It essentially brings an understanding and alignment within the team on your organization, your purpose, your priorities and your goals. So, as as your team is working on this, it really brings them all together for a clear understanding of all that. It also gives you a clear understanding of your prospects.
It’s going to force you to have to understand your prospects to put this all together and as such, it helps you create effective compelling messaging and content for your website. It also will force you to come up with a clear and articulate and concise value proposition that you can you can communicate to your prospects.
And finally, it’s going to inform the creative process in terms of the color palette, the fonts and the communication style. So if you’re considering a redesign, look for an agency that understands the importance of a digital brand guide in the process of a redesign and make sure that they will work collaboratively with you in creating that. It really is a very, very strong component and key component of a redesign. Thank you.
