The Complete Guide to Branding Your WordPress Website
January 22. 2021
Every company with a decent online marketing strategy has a good brand. Whether you are selling clothes, promoting movers, or giving exercise advice, you need to have a brand so that your marketing efforts have a clear focal point. Unfortunately, branding your WordPress website is easier said than done. This is why we will go a bit more in-depth into website branding and what you need to consider when tackling it.
Branding your WordPress website
When done properly, branding is one of the most beautiful aspects of a website. A good brand is easy to recognize, easy to understand and a joy to use for promoting your website. But, as you will soon learn, every good brand has a surprising amount of depth to it that you need to consider. This is one of the reasons why companies can sometimes spend months on brand-design until they are finally satisfied with the outcome. So, let’s not dilly dally, and let’s jump right in.
Defining the core idea
The first step in defining your brand is coming up with a core idea. To put it simply, this is the idea that your entire website is going to be based around (hence the “core” part). For example, let’s say that you are creating a website about exercise. Is it going to be about building muscles and gaining strength? Or is going to be about function exercises and natural workout? You can even take the health approach, and focus on injury prevention and proper diet. But, the one thing you should never do is to try and use it all. Every website has an audience, and every audience requires different marketing. Therefore, it is essential that you define a core idea that is going to be the pillar for the rest of your website.
Creating a logo
With your core idea taken care of, you need to decide on a logo. A good logo is your core idea, condensed into a single image. If it doesn’t tell a visual story, it should at least give off the right feeling. Know that your audience needs to have a certain feeling associated with your content. Coca-Cola has happiness, Ford has safety and efficiency, Facebook has friendships, Google has diversity… This “feeling” is what allows them to be easily recognizable and memorable. Therefore, do yourself a favor and study carefully before deciding on a logo. As you will soon learn, logo design is a science in itself.
Once you have your logo, remember to create a favicon. This is a small image that will represent your website, alongside your logo. The most common usage for a favicon is the image that you can see next to the website name in the tab. You can choose to use your logo as your favicon, but people often use the second-best logo idea for it.
Incorporating the right theme
Once you have your logo figured out, you need to decide on a theme. Picking and installing a website theme is fairly straightforward, once you know what you are looking for. The goal here is to find the theme that gives you the best background for your core idea. A good theme helps your content, including your logo, shine. So, try to carefully consider different themes and figure out which kind your competition is using and why. The more you can pinpoint their decision, the more you can learn whether they were good or bad.
Choosing proper colors and artwork
An especially important part of choosing your theme is the colors and the artwork. Your colors must go inline with your brand and your logo. A website with ill-chosen colors is difficult to look at and usually diverts attention. In certain cases, it can be even tiring to read as the reader’s brain simply feels uneasy.
On the other hand, when the colors and the artwork are inline with the core idea, they help promote and emphasize it. This serves to make your website more memorable and easier to digest. Colors especially play a big role in how a person feels while reading a website. For instance, it doesn’t make much sense to have a website dedicated to herbal products and color it in neon purple or metallic gray. Keep in mind that every color has a certain feeling to it, and that color combinations can even pose a completely new one. This is why our advice is to always consult with a professional, as amateurs rarely have the necessary knowledge to make the right choices. Especially when it comes to artwork.
Developing a branding voice
The final thing to develop regarding your brand is your voice. The whole point of running a website is communicating with an audience. And everyone has a certain tone and style to it, which we will call a voice. As with everything so far, your voice needs to be in line with your core idea and your brand. For example, if you have a website about taking care of pets with a soft theme and cozy colors, it doesn’t make much sense to have an authoritative, professional voice. You need to keep everything in line so that your website has a unified feel to it. Your voice will be present in your email marketing efforts, promotional posts, blog and page content, and correspondence with customers. So, make sure that you develop a suitable one.
Final thoughts
The final thing we would like to mention about branding your WordPress website is that it isn’t a one-and-done project. Developing a brand is something that takes considerable time and constant effort. So, use the steps we’ve outline to set yourself up properly. And then proceed with consistency and care. Only by doing so can you expect to have a recognizable, well-promoted website.