Where a strong brand exists, the online visual language will be an extension of it, fitting into an overall brand personality applied across all marketing and communication channels. Extending the visual language in this instance needs care and attention as few brands, even today, are created with enough sensitivity towards online communications.
Where the parent brand is weak, the online visual language can play a major part in redefining or strengthening it. Regularly, in our experience, defining the online brand language plays a major part in re-invigorating a parent brand. In fact the exercise often expands out to encompass a programme of work to update the higher-level brand. This sideways expansion may not be the perfect way to refresh a brand, but it is often easier to accomplish than a top-down process, and in organisations that are online-focused it may be an appropriate and successful process to follow.
Alongside the visual language, an online brand is defined by how your customers will interact with it. If a site looks great but is hard to use, it will not have a positive effect on your customers.
In fact online, the interaction model (the way people use your site) is at least as important as the visual language. This makes information architecture, the process of defining the organisation of content and services, a crucial factor in defining brand personality. A well-thought out interaction model will make an enormous contribution to how well a brand is perceived, let alone how successful the site is commercially.
In a redesign context, time needs to be invested in assessing where the strengths and weaknesses are in the existing design scheme before moving on to define a new one. Assuming that has been done, shaping the information architecture of the new site may resolve many of the problems without a new visual language.
However, combine a powerful visual language and an intelligent approach to interaction and your new site will have a brand personality that is capable of engaging customers and ensuring that they maintain a long-term relationship with your organisation.
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