Why worry about branding your store? Creating a website or an ecommerce store is fairly easy. Just go to Shopify.com, start a free account, select a theme, configure, create products and off you go. You are online. You make a sale, that gives you a buzz and you wait for the next one.
Making a business successful is not easy. Some seem to be able to do it with a breeze, others try all the tips in every single blog published and still struggle to make the business sustainable. The point is, we are living in a very competitive world of internet revolution where everything is available online and there is a lot of competition.
Research and Analysis
Spend time on doing some research on your competitors, target audience and the type of products you are planning to sell. See what is working for your competitors and what is not. See how competitors have designed their sites, how they project their products, how they advertise, what sort of customer service they provide, what their packaging is like and you will start to develop a picture of what you need to go.
You really need to understand the demographics of your target audience. What is the age bracket for your customers? Where do they live? What are their interests?
Understand your product and see how your competitors showcase similar products. Is it a consumer product or are you selling directly to businesses? Is there a health element attached to the products or your products are designed for recreation?
Once you have conducted a detailed market research, a picture should start to emerge which will then give you the answers you need to design your website. Remember, it is not your preferences that matter but those of your target customers.
Clarity and Consistency
The research you have done will give you the clarity you need to implement changes on your website. In fact, you can start to visualise the personality of your brand that you want your end customers to perceive. With that clarity, you will need consistency to build your brand. We are going to give you seven tips you can use to implement branding on your Shopify store. As you build your store and introduce more content and changes in the future, the more consistent you are in implementing your brand through your website, packaging, customer service and products, the more successful you will be in creating a valuable brand in the eyes of your customers.
7 Ways For Branding Your Shopify Store
- Logo
- Theme
- Typography
- Brand Colours
- Design Elements
- Images
- Content
We are going to discuss each point in more detail below:
1. Logo
Your logo is the first element your customers connect with. In this day and age of social media, you need a simple and bold logo that can be easily used on your website and different social channels. However, the logo has to be based on your research and target audience. The above logo of Kitzini may be most relevant for a kitchen products company but could be boring for a kids clothing company. Perhaps a more fun logo like the one we designed for Little Magic Box below will be more relevant
Don’t be shy from branding your images with your logo. See how Hotbox Storage have used clever photography to picture their product in use where the logo is also visible.
2. Theme
Shopify theme store has 10 free and 49 paid themes which can instantly bring life to your store. Another great thing about Shopify themes is that they all have something different to offer in terms of look and feel and features. Which one do you go for? Once again, you have to be consistent in your application of the brand vision you established in the research. You can can narrow down the themes on the basis of the following:
- Minimalist
- Fun
- Big imagery
- Large inventories
- Small inventories
- Grid style
Pick a theme that suits the profile and personality of the brand that you are trying to build.
3. Typography
Typography plays a big part in creating a brand image and that is why many major brands like Intel go through the effort of designing and creating their own bespoke font. The font used for the theme above creates a fun and lively outlook especially when combined with the theme design and imagery. This may not be suitable for a wholesaler’s website selling machine parts.
Here is another example of a minimalist straight lined font that really compliments the simplicity, colour and design of the product.
If you are wondering where you can find fonts for your website, the answer is google fonts, https://fonts.google.com/. Google fonts provide a library of free fonts that can be integrated with your Shopify store. See image below:
You can also select and purchase an Adobe Typekit font from https://typekit.com/foundries/adobe. These font libraries can help you create a unique image for your brand so why not give it a go.
4. Brand Colours
Here is another way of bringing colour to your site. Not just any colour but a colour that would compliment your brand and the products you sell. Would you dress up a kids clothing company in black and red or baby pastel colours? Imagine how mums may feel who are looking to buy clothes for their new born. If that is your market then you may want to use colours like these:
On the other hand, if you are selling food items then you may want to consider using one of the food colours from the following palette:
Find out what colours compliment your range of products and consistently implement them through the images, headings and fonts used on your website.
5. Design Elements
Design elements can add to your brand appeal and how your customers will engage with the website. There are a lot of features that can help your achieve the look you want such as parallax, slideshow, Instagram feed, product selector, etc. However you have to be careful to not overdo this by selecting too many dynamic and interactive features as they can really slow down the site and put off your customers.
6. Images
A picture is worth a thousand words and in the context of creating a brand vision, images that follow a certain theme can really put life in your site. It is easy to buy images from stock libraries but if you were to follow a certain theme for your images, you can tell a story about your brand. This is what clever marketers do, they use the Pavlov’s Dogs theory to develop a strategy to invoke the rights emotions in the potential end users. That is why eu.kitzini.com frequently publishes food recipes and images showing mouth-watering dishes. Halo.coffee shows rich images of chocolate slabs, café’s and exclusive images of people enjoying their favourite blend to create a particular brand image for their exclusive yet biodegradable coffee pods. You can do this too on your site. Look at what your end customers are looking to achieve by using your products and tell a story through your images to touch the right nerves.
7. Content
Content is made of both your copy and media content. You don’t want a food critic to write michellin star type descriptions for baby products. Nope, that will not gel well with the mums. Likewise, you don’t want business like descriptions of the baby products either. Content is king as they say. Content is what people are going to read and through carefully drafted about us section and product descriptions, your end customers are going to understand what’s really special about your brand.
Not only that, search engines like google and bing are looking for unique and original content. As you introduce more value added content on your site, you earn more brownie points with the search engines and your website ranking starts to climb above your competitors.
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