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Branding Your Website

Your website should help you reinforce your brand, using both visual cues and adequate content. Your website branding should be an extension of the way you market off-line. Branding isn�t just about your logo, althouth a logo is an important visual element to help people remember your brand. Brand is the way people perceive your company and the image you want to project: friendly or formal, serious or upbeat, conservative or trendy, etc.. A brand represents a predictable pattern of qualities and behavior that gives users a strong sense of security. Branding consistency very much applies to websites. Following are some basic guidelines to brand your website:

• Include your logo in all pages Seeing your logo in a familiar spot in all your pages gives visitors the reassurance that they are still in your site. The most common location for the logo is the top left corner or each page. Your logo can also be a useful navigation aid, and should be clickable and hyperlinked to your homepage (the only exception is the logo in the homepage itself).
• Complement your logo with a tagline A tagline is a short, catchy sentence that summarizes your business purpose. More often than not, we stumble upon websites that don.t have a tagline, or, if they do, they don.t tell us anything meaningful about the site.s business. For example, two years ago, the homepage for Ford offered the following tagline: .Striving to make the world a better place.. That is a lousy tagline for a car company. It could be a fine tagline for an institution like the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity, but not for a company that makes cars. Fortunately, today, Ford.s homepage offers a better tagline: .100 Years of Automotive Achievement.. Another example of a great tagline is .WalMart: always low prices": what a great way to summarize their whole business strategy in just three words!
• Create a favicon A favicon is a small graphic element that appears to the left of the URL in the address bar. For example, a red .Y. to the left www.yahoo.com in the address bar when you go to Yahoo! is Yahoo!�s favicon.
  To create a favicon, you can use a graphics program called Icon Forge (you can download a free trial version in CNET): http://download.com.com/3000-2195-10128559.html
  You can either create a favicon from scratch, or import a 16x16 �.gif� or �.jpg� file and save it as a �.ico� file. You will then have to save your icon with the default name of �favicon.ico�, and upload it to the root directory of your website (where your index page is). Finally, after that, you must associate your icon to each of your web pages. You do that by including the following HTML code immediately after the
  ‹HEAD› tag of your pages: ‹link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico"›
  To try it out once you do that, type your domain in the address bar and then add your page to your favorites. You should be able to see the favicon next to your bookmarked page title. Also, the next time you type your URL in the address bar, you will also see your favicon to the left of the URL.
• Have a consistent look and feel Use a consistent color scheme and layout throughout your site. It is very important that the color scheme you use for your website be similar to the one used in your off-line communication pieces. The use of the right colors is very important, since colors have connotations and moods associated to them. For example, red can sometimes project warmth although it usually comes across as too aggressive. Dark blues, especially when combined with yellow or gold can project richness and exclusivity, while greens and yellows suggest nature.
• Have an About Us section The Internet has been heralded as "the great equalizer": on a browser window, any company, no matter how small, can look as good as a large company with a long history of quality and service. This situation also presents an important challenge for small businesses: Since branding is trust, how can I convince my potential customers that I am not an unethical, fly-by-night operation? The best way to do that, other than by your performance itself, is through a properly structured "About Us" page. Your "About Us" page must not only introduce your company to your potential customers, but must do so in a way that it explains why they should trust you and your company. Often, this means answering six basic questions:
  
  • Who is behind your website? Talk about yourself and include your picture.
  • Is this a real business? Nothing tells users that you.re for real as your physicall address. Always include your full contact information in your About Us section.
  • How do you make money? Your business model has to be evident, or people will ask themselves: .what.s the catch?. Explain what your revenue streams are and why you charge what you charge. Always talk .benefits. and .value., not price.
  • How long have you been in business? People tend to regard longevity and stability as important qualifiers to determine trust. Since most small online businesses tend to be very young, it may be hard to use the longevity card to solicit trust. If that is your case, you can talk about your past experience instead. For most small business owners, their past experience is highly relevant to their current businesses. Use your "About Us" page to talk about it, and how does it relate to and benefit your current business.
  • How can your visitors know that you deliver? The best way to show your prospective customers what you can do for them is through testimonials from satisfied customers. Ideally, the testimonials should come from companies that accurately reflect your customer�s demographics. To be effective, these testimonials must provide some form of contact information of those who offer them (usually, a name and a link to their website will work).
  • Are you related to the business community? Another way to establish credibility and trust is to belong to community, trade or professional associations. These entities usually authorize their members to use their logos. For example, a repair shop�s website can use the seal of the ASE to emphasize that its mechanics are well trained.
  • Can visitors trust you with their private information? People are very protective of their personal information, especially on-line. You should have a privacy policy clearly displayed somewhere in your website, and you should link to it from your "About Us" page.