Your e-commerce brand is not just limited to your logo or any other visual element. Its role is to cajole your customers to choose your company over the competitors. Whatever you do to promote and identify your business or company is considered as branding – even the name you choose. A brand plays a very important role in defining the success of your e-commerce business. You have to put a lot of effort into your branding strategy and execution just like you leave no stone unturned in the product development. Branding job is never going to end and requires consistency and persistence. The customers will not stay in touch with you for a longer time if you don’t have an organized branding strategy. It will also limit your brand recognition, profitability, and future growth.
Whatever the size of your business is, branding is equally important. Never make these mistakes in branding to keep your brand intact, and your customers satiated.
Branding Mistakes To Avoid:
1. Creating a brand identity without a proper strategy:
Many businesses don’t consider a proper brand strategy and directly jump to create a logo, e-commerce website, and marketing practices. However, just like anything that is done haphazardly, brands built solely on aesthetics fall apart quickly.
You must focus on the identity of your brand during the foundation of your business. Analyze what your business stands for, how you are competing with other merchants in the same industry, who is your target audience, and where you want to take your business in the upcoming years. If you have answers to all these questions then you will be able to start building a brand identity.
Whether you are just a startup in the e-commerce industry or an established e-commerce business, this step will play a bigger role than you expected in your business success. Also, as your brand makes success, it should evolve. The best example of this is Amazon whose brand identity evolved as the company grew.
Do you know that the original name of the company was “Cadabra” but is then replaced by “Amazon” when a lawyer misheard it as “cadaver”?
Amazon name was the product of a conscious effort to accomplish two different things:
- Appearing at the top position of alphabetical lists (At that time Search engine sorted links alphabetically)
- Conjure an image of sheer size and volume (the tagline of the site when it started was “Earth’s biggest bookstore”.
Although the founder “Jeff Bezos” finally settled on a name, the logo was changed 5 times in 5 years. In the first two iterations, a river was running through a stylized “A” but then it was reduced to site URL. But when Amazon started selling many things apart from books and records, the company needed a new identity. So, then the latest logo was introduced (in 2000) which consists of an arrow element. There were 3 main purposes of the arrow:
- It represents that company is selling every product from A to Z.
- It also became a symbol of the company’s commitment to getting products from one point to another. Finally, the arrow resembles a smile.
It is not necessary that you must have multi-billion businesses like Amazon to have a brand identity. You can still be ambitious in defining your brand strategy.
2. Don’t use a copy that is vague and erroneous:
Many business owners use inaccurate or unclear copywriting just to impress and attract their target audience. Many brands overuse certain jargons and buzzwords. They also use generic content to connect as many readers as possible. This is a very common mistake in the e-commerce industry as well.
It ostensibly seems working but is quite ephemeral. Once the visitors realize that the content they are reading is misleading to believe something, they immediately leave the site. They will also tell everyone about this negative experience about your brand which will further tarnish your reputation.
We understand that it is essential to attract customers to your e-commerce store, but your copyright should be clear and straight to the point. If you feel that you cannot find something new, try to use things like price, ease of use, or availability. Showing the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of your brand will help in creating more effective copy that engages and sells to potential customers.
Apart from focusing on the USP, you must also read the proof copy. You want your brand to be noticed because the copy and products are good.
3. No guidelines of the brand:
Every business operates with certain regulations of what employees can and can’t do. Your branding should also have a set of guidelines to ensure reliability and consistency across different campaigns. You must cover these areas into your guidelines:
- Proper usage of logo, and placement
- Writing style, Font, voice, and tone
- Images and visuals
- Color schemes
- Typography and font
4. Lack of Strong Visuals:
Do you know that the human brain understands images 60,000 times faster than text? Also, our eyes are more attracted to images than text. Thus, if your e-commerce branding is lacking visuals then you will struggle to engage your audience.
There are various types of visual content. Most of the visual content is decorative i.e. it doesn’t add value to the copy. But that’s not the right practice. If you are also using visuals of this kind, then you are missing an opportunity to reinforce your brand and ensure that your message gets across to your audience.
Thus, instead of using a lot of decorative images, your visuals should be focused on branding. If your brand has already specified a colour palette, then the images should comprise those colours.
5. Underestimating a Logo:
The logo of your brand is the identity and visual representation of your brand. It should be easy to recognize and long-lasting to remember. Many businesses don’t get off the brand because of their poor logos which can’t communicate their brand values. The common mistakes that brand owners commit in their logos:
- Poor Colour Combinations
- Illegible fonts
- Symbols are not matching the brand or business purpose
- Irrelevant slogans
Many businesses cut corners regarding logo design, especially those who are working on a tight budget. They believe that money spends on logo creation should be better used in product development. They forget that customers may not even use high-quality products without a professionally designed logo.
In the design circles, there is a common adage “You get what you pay for”. If you will hire someone who has very little experience in designing a logo, you will get a poor quality product. But if you hire someone with good experience, the delivered product will be worth every single dollar you spent.
6. Neglecting User Experience:
Customer experience is the foremost thing of a business. The brand should focus on the customer’s experience and if it doesn’t then it will simply fall apart. You want your business to be known for providing a great customer experience.
As per a study, customers believe that negative interactions with a brand’s customer service will negatively affect the company. Negative interactions imply a poor understanding of customer’s needs, unavailability of staff or products, products out of stock, etc.
As an e-commerce site owner, you must realize the value of UX as it is more important than just the site’s appearance.
7. Rebranding Too Quickly:
You must have consistency in regards to your brand identity. If you are changing elements of your brand too often then the customers will get confused and lose your brand recognition.
Wrapping Up:
In this article, we have understood the importance of branding and what common mistakes of branding we must avoid. At Ceymox Technologies, the best e-commerce development company in India, we follow the best branding practices while designing your e-commerce site. We aim to not just attract customers to the site but also make a long-lasting impression. Let us know your requirements.
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