3 Ways to Create a Cohesive Brand on Your Website
What is a Cohesive Brand?
Your business’ brand goes way beyond your colours or fonts.
Your brand is your business’ personality, as well as the entire experience you create for your clients or customers.
Let’s illustrate this point with a basic example…
Think about your experience of going to McDonalds for a burger versus an upscale steakhouse.
Both places would look very different and serve different kinds of food, but they also create a distinct experience and evoke different emotions for their customers.
When you think of McDonalds, you probably think of convenience, speed, and knowing exactly what you’re going to get every time, no matter where in the world you are.
On the other hand, the thought of dining at a posh steakhouse probably makes words like luxury, special treat and celebration come to mind.
Both restaurants create an experience through their cohesive brands - everything from how they market themselves, to your experience in their restaurants and the food they serve.
Why a Cohesive Brand Matters for Your Business
Let’s say you decide to visit that posh steakhouse for your birthday dinner. It’s your first time there, but from the ads you’ve seen around town, it looks like a fancy restaurant that you’re excited to get dressed up for in your favourite dress and heels.
But if you walked into that steakhouse and were greeted by a red and yellow clown when you were expecting a luxurious and upscale experience, you’d probably turn around and leave…
That’s because the clown isn’t cohesive with the rest of the restaurant’s branding. It creates an uncomfortable, confusing experience that doesn’t match your expectations of how the evening should go.
And you never want your ideal clients or customers to feel confused. Because a confused person doesn’t make buying decisions.
If they’re confused, they will find a competitor who does make it easy for them to understand what they can expect when they work with them or buy their product.
This is an extreme example, but it clearly shows why creating a cohesive brand for your business is so important to get right.
Because when your business does have a cohesive brand, one that creates the atmosphere you want your ideal clients to feel, whether that’s on your social media channels or website, it subconsciously builds trust in your business.
When everything fits together seamlessly between your social media graphics, tone of voice in your captions, and your website, it creates a welcoming and comfortable experience for your potential clients.
And it subconsciously gives them a little preview of what it’s going to be like to work with you or what they can expect from your products. They can get a sense that they’ll be dining at the steakhouse, not McDonalds.
3 Simple Ways Your Website Can Support You With Creating a Cohesive Brand
Your website is your business’ online home. It brings everything together about your business in one place, in a simple and organised way.
Unlike a social media profile, you have total ownership over your website’s appearance and what information goes where.
It’s much easier on the eyes than scrolling through endless content trying to find an offer, and you’re also not at the mercy of your most recent post.
Instead, you get to decide what information someone sees on your website and in what order.
And you also have full control over how to create a cohesive brand experience on your website!
Today, I’ll share with you 3 simple ways your website can support you with creating a cohesive brand.
3 Simple Ways to Create a Cohesive Brand on Your Website
Using The Right Colours
When deciding on your brand’s colours, you must take into consideration the emotions you want your brand to convey. Once you know that, you can choose colours that reflect those emotions.
For instance, is your brand joyful? Expensive? Calm? Playful?
Then, consider what colours align with those emotions.
To offer an example, a brand that wants to be perceived as expensive would feature lots of black on their website, while a more playful brand would have bright colours, like pink and yellow.
How to Use Colours on Your Website
When it comes to colours on your website, less is always more.
I recommend having 2 or 3 main colours on your website. Use a bright one for your buttons and links, and then use 1 or 2 more for a few coloured backgrounds.
Just be sure to break up those coloured backgrounds with white ones as well, as that will keep the page visually interesting.
Make sure that the colours are also consistent with the ones on your social media channels, so that as someone clicks from your socials to check out your website, it’s all part of one cohesive experience.
Website Photos
Photos can truly make or break your website.
It doesn’t matter how pretty the rest of the site is - if your photos are blurry, low quality, or were obviously taken on your flip phone, it’s going to erode the trust someone has in your brand instantly.
So it’s of the utmost importance to have high quality photos on your website.
And the key to your photos creating a cohesive brand experience on your website is consistency.
You definitely want to avoid using a mishmash of stock photos on your website, if you can.
Not only does using stock photos, especially ones that are obviously stock photos, create a dissonance in the branding on your website, it’s also not great for your SEO because those pictures are being used by so many other websites.
SEO can be an overwhelming topic, but it’s basically the process of making your website Google friendly.
And Google’s goal is always to prioritise valuable and original content. It wants to avoid showing the same photos to its users on multiple websites.
So it may place your website lower down in the search results for using stock photos.
Rather than using a haphazard mix of generic stock photos, select photos all from the same photographer instead to create a cohesive experience on your website.
And if you do have a professional branding shoot planned, be sure to include your brand’s colours in the photos, as well as any relevant props that can help convey your brand’s personality.
For example, if you’re a specialist Organisation VA with a bit of a quirky personality and you call yourself the Fairy Godmother of Organising, you might bring a “magic” wand along to your shoot.
How to Use Photos on Your Website
Photos, either of yourself or any other props that are relevant to your business (like notebooks, pen and paper, a laptop, etc) are really great for breaking up larger sections of text on your website.
You can use them side by side with a couple of paragraphs, or even as a background of a section.
And you definitely want to be sure that you have a photo of you looking at the camera on your About page. When a website visitor comes to your About page, it’s because they want to learn more about the person behind the business.
People buy from people and they want to feel connected to the small business they’re supporting.
A photo of you is a great way to show them who you are and invite them to learn more about your business.
Text aka “Copy” on Your Website
The text on your website, also known as the website's copy, is the meat and potatoes of your website.
It’s really important to let your brand personality shine through in the words you use.
Unless your brand is stiff and formal (which if you’re reading this, it probably isn’t), write in a casual, conversational tone - it’s not your college English class!
You could also create a cohesive, welcoming experience on your website through using slang that your ideal client uses.
For example, on one of your buttons you could say “Get the deets” instead of “Get the details”.
The Role of Your Website’s Copy
How to write killer, high-converting website copy could be a whole article on its own, but I’ll summarise by saying the purpose of your website’s copy is to create an emotional connection to your visitor.
Through establishing that connection, the aim is to persuade them to buy your product, book an initial call so they can learn more about your services, or join your audience through your email list, reading your blog, etc.
It’s not enough to tell them the details of what they’re going to get with your product or service, you must show them why it matters to them.
What problem will it solve? Or what dream will help them achieve?
You probably don’t care about what’s actually inside your mattress, only that it’s going to help you get an amazing night’s sleep.
And if you’re a service-based business owner, you can use your website’s copy to create awareness of your client’s problem, and then present your offer as the perfect solution to that problem.
If you’re a health coach, you might have a headline at the top of your Services page that asks your visitor if they’re tired of the yo-yo diets and juice detoxes that just leave them feeling worse than they did before. Or, how they can never get motivated to exercise.
Then, and only then, will you dive into how when they work with you, you prepare quick and easy to follow meal plans and exercise routines for them that make eating healthy and working out fun. And you also work on their mindset together to make the shift towards a healthy lifestyle one they’re super excited about.
From that perspective, it makes your offer a no-brainer!
When you frame your offer as the solution to your ideal client’s problem, it becomes irresistible to them, and makes them so much more likely to take action.
Conclusion
A cohesive brand makes a huge difference when it comes to creating trust with your ideal clients and encouraging them to buy from you or reaching out to learn more about working together.
And your website can be a powerful tool in creating a cohesive brand for your business, so your ideal clients or customers have the experience on your website that you want them to.
I feel so strongly about the power of websites, because your website truly can be your virtual business partner attracting ideal clients for you 24/7 while you’re busy working on other parts of your business, or just spending some time off your business relaxing.
Want to learn more about drawing in more ideal customers or clients through your website?
Grab my free checklist that will show you exactly what needs to be on your website to attract more of your dream clients or customers!
