subject: Branding Your Shopping Website [print this page] Branding Your Shopping Website Branding Your Shopping Website
Internet shopping has become such a normal occurrence these days. As such, anyone who wants to get on the online sales bandwagon is on a good trend. Fortunately, setting up shopping websites have also become relatively easy.
There are hundreds of templates for online shopping sites available to anyone with just a click of the mouse. Even filing inventory for those sites have become so easy with new supply chain management methods like dropshipping. With that, the selling online has become very competitive.
To succeed in this cutthroat industry, a good brand is a must-have. A good brand speaks to reliability. It is a way for a shopper to determine if the online shopping websites they visit are trust-worthy. This is a foremost consideration for most online buyers. They need to know that the site is credible before they even think about typing in those credit card details to make a purchase.
Branding your shopping website is no easy feat. Even in the non-virtual world, branding is a complicated matter. Your brand identity will be communicated in multiple ways, in multiple channels and will happen throughout the lifetime of your business.
Let's go through the branding exercise that most companies go through. First, you need to create a personality for your brand. Just like you would shape and mold a real person, this is what you need to do for your online shopping sites. Make a list of your company's core values and how you intend to translate this via your products and/or service offerings. Your brand personality should have qualities that really stand out. Are you innovative? Quality-centric? Creative? At this point, having a mission and vision statement for your online shopping sites can help you create a better brand.
Next, create a tagline for your business. This is a one-liner that summarizes the essence of your business. It should be related to the kinds of products you sell online at the same time, it should reflect how you intend to deliver to your target market.
It is also important to define the target audience for your online shopping sites. This will help you create a better brand strategy when it comes to online marketing. But more than that, knowing who your target audience is can help you easily design your online shopping sites as well as select the products that best fit their needs.
After you are satisfied with the brand that you've created, it is time to align this with your marketing materials. Your brand should be consistently communicated from your logo to your colors. Even the way you write your content should be tied in to your shopping website's brand. Ensure this consistency before you start engaging your target audience.
Before you fully deploy your online shopping sites with your well-designed brand in mind, it would be a safer bet to test this with a controlled set of people. Maybe share it with your friends and family and get their opinion first. Do they have the same understanding of your goals and objectives for your online shopping site as you've envisioned during your branding activity? If they do, then it's safe to assume that you got it right.
It's now time to launch your online shopping site. Good luck!
