Brand Your Site, Increase Your Sales | Chris Malta's EBiz Insider Podcast

Chris Malta's EBiz Insider Podcast

When I consult for ECommerce businesses or teach EBiz owners who already have sites, one of the things that stands out the most to me is the total lack of an Identity Package for that ECommerce business. An Identity Package helps to set the tone for site design, marketing style, and the entire Brand of the business...which always leads to more sales.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Chris Malta's EBiz Insider Podcast, where the only time you WON'T hear the truth, is AFTER YOU LEAVE!

When I consult for ECommerce businesses or teach EBiz owners who already have sites, one of the things that stands out the most to me is the total lack of an Identity Package for that ECommerce business. An Identity Package helps to set the tone for site design, marketing style, and the entire Brand Identity of the business.

A well-constructed Branding Identity is an absolute MUST for ANY business to be truly successful, online or offline. For an EBiz, an Identity Package for branding consists of three things:

1. A GOOD SITE NAME

I’m often surprised by the number of people who have taken bad advice or learned the wrong things and given their web sites names that will do nothing for their business at best, and hurt it at worst. I don’t blame the site owners; there’s a tremendous amount of bad info floating around out there. However, when it comes to branding, they do need to learn how to do it right.

How many times have you seen a site named something like “MyGreatBargains.com”, or “GreatBuys4U.com”, or “BigPlaceFullOfExcellentThingsAtLowPrices.com”? Okay, that last one is a stretch, but you know what I mean, right?

Actually, that was a trick question. You probably only rarely come across sites with a names like that. Why? Because they don’t rank well in the search engines, and hardly ever get found by shoppers.

The reason they don’t rank well is another topic altogether; perhaps a discussion for another day, but I’ll mention it here in passing. They don’t rank because they’re trying to sell a whole bunch of different products on the same web site. Those products all have widely different Keywords in their product names and marketing content. Google and the other search engines rank best on RELEVANT Keyword content; Keywords that they know are related to one another in some way.

So, when the search engines see a site that has page after page of words describing products that the search engine knows are NOT related to one another, that site doesn’t rank well n omatter how good it's branding might be. Period.

Yep, I know, big-box stores that carry widely varied stuff seem to rank pretty well, don’t they. However, that’s for different reasons altogether, and they can be beaten with highly targeted web sites.

For that reason and many others, small home-based EBiz sites need to sell ONLY one specific product line per site in order to do well in the search engines.

As I said, though, that’s a topic for another time. There are LOTS of details involved in making an ECommerce business successful, and right now we're talking about ONE of those things: Branding. So let’s get back to our conversation about an Identity Package, with site names being the first thing to learn.

A site name needs to reflect what it sells. On a properly built, web site with thoughtful branding, that will be something very specific. However, it can’t just be “Toasters.com”.

For one thing, that name is already taken, which most of the best product-descriptive names are. For another, though, a site name needs to connect with its consumer demographic. To connect with its consumer demographic, the business owner needs to know who that consumer demographic IS. I'll talk about that in another post in this blog. Back to names, now.

Let’s say that an EBiz owner sells a very specific line of toasters that is best suited for a female audience (a demographic) made up of older women who have a serious passion for baking and cooking. What site name do you think would appeal more to that consumer audience?

– BestToasters4U.com – CheapToasters.com – CozyKitchenToasters.com

If you picked the last one, you’re right. A site name, like everything else in marketing, needs to tell part of a story and also make an emotional connection with its consumers. That's part of branding. CozyKitchenToasters.com evokes a warm, comfortable, familiar place where family gathers and great food is carefully made with lots of love.

The other two choices, well…don’t. So, you can see the difference between thoughtless, sales-gimmicky names and a carefully selected audience-driven name, right?

Good. That leads us to some of the other things a good site name does. It helps to drive site design. A name like that inspires a site with a warm, rich color palette, a cozy, comfortable graphic treatment and a very personally friendly space.

What else does it do? Among other things, it helps to inspire the creation of the second part of an Identity Package for branding. The Tagline.

2. A GOOD TAGLINE

These used to be called “slogans”. Now we call them Taglines, or ‘Tags’ for short.

A business without a Tagline in it's branding is a business that needs to get one, or close up shop. I cannot stress strongly enough that this is a critical part of your Identity Package, and your Identity Package is a critical part of your branding. Your branding is a critical part of your marketing, and…well, I’m sure you get the idea!

In ECommerce, Tag Lines are generally best inspired by site names. The Tag needs to support the name, while at the same time telling another part of the branding story.

Professional copywriters who create Taglines often go through dozens, if not more than a hundred different ideas before settling on a good Tag. This is not something to be taken lightly. Remember, it has to support the name, and tell more of the story of the brand.

“You’ve tried the rest, now try the best!” isn’t gonna cut it. At one time, that Tag was clever. That’s when it was new, back before humans discovered fire.

A good Tagline needs to be short, memorable, part of a story, and supportive of the brand. It needs to CONNECT with people emotionally as well, just like the site name should.

Another rule of thumb is that a Tagline shouldn’t ever be more than 3 to 5 words. That makes them much easier for consumers to remember, and that’s what you want.

Think of some of the most memorable Tags you know.

– Don’t leave home with it (5 words) – You deserve a break today (5 words) – Just Do It (3 words) – The quicker picker-upper (4 words) – The King of beers (4 words)

See what I mean? Short, memorable, and telling part of a story. Let’s look at the first one; the American Express Tagline “Don’t Leave Home Without It”. This Tag is using negative reinforcement to create a scary imagined impact if you DON’T have the product.

Warning a fellow human being not to leave a safe, comfortable place and go out into the big, bad world without a taking specific thing along makes a very visceral connection with us psychologically. It subconsciously makes us feel like bad, BAD things are going to happen if we leave our home without this thing. Again, it’s psychology. As humans, we look to other humans to warn us of danger, and a need to pay attention to those warnings is deeply ingrained in our psyche.

So, a negatively reinforcing Tagline like that works very well in branding.

What Tagline would we give our CozyKitchenToasters.com web site?

There are lots of possibilities, and there’s a serious amount of research to do before choosing one, but I’ll just throw one out there off the top of my head. (Excuse me while I remove my hat…)

Okay, how about:

"Real kitchens bake with love".

That’s 5 words. Yeah, I know, it sounds a little sappy when you look at it sitting there all by itself. Hey, I spent all of 30 seconds coming up with that; cut me a little slack!

BUT, put that Tag together with the site name ‘CozyKitchenToasters.com’ and the right graphic design, and I promise you it will look perfectly natural in that site's branding, make an emotional connection, and tell another part of the story of the site’s Brand.

There’s still one thing missing, though. The site name and Tagline will play a part in helping us to design the third and final part of an Identity Package for branding: The Logo.

3. A GOOD LOGO

How many times have you seen a web site that just has text in the top left corner of each page that says something like ‘BobsWebSite.com’? Probably too often. That's NOT branding.

The top left corner of any page on your web site is the first impression your customers have of your Brand. We all know how important first impressions are. Because we’re raised to read left to right, top to bottom (in most Western cultures, anyway) the first thing we see when our eyes hit a new piece of media, like a web page, is the top left corner of the page.

That’s where our brains expect us to start reading, so that’s the first place our eyes go. Sometimes we don’t even realize that, but it happens every time. No matter where we THINK we looked first, our brains instantly register whatever is in that top left corner.

The brainiacs at MIT tell us that the human brain can register and recall an image that it sees for as little as 13 MILLISECONDS.

That’s 13 one-thousands of a second!! So don’t think for a millisecond that your customers’ brains don’t take whatever is in the top left corner of your web site pages as their first impression of your business and branding; they absolutely do.

If that top left corner is a flat, dry, no-personality lump of text that says ‘BobsWebSite.com’, you’ve already lost that customer in their first couple of seconds on your site. At that point even the customer doesn’t consciously realize it yet, but SUBconsciously they already know they’re not going to buy anything from you, because you've killed your branding before it got a chance to get started.

A good Logo completes your Identity Package and is a cornerstone of your site’s branding. In a quick, visually symbolic way, a good Logo captures attention, tells yet another part of the Brand story, sets a mood for your customers and much more.

Professional designers charge thousands of dollars for a really good Logo, because they do a lot of research into your customer demographic and your product market and play with dozens of ideas before finalizing the design.

Don’t think you can get a good Logo from one of those five-dollar graphics sites. The graphic artists who do those dirt-cheap Logo designs literally time themselves and only devote about 10 to 15 minutes of their time to each Logo they create. How else can we realistically expect them to make any money otherwise? They’re not doing it for fun!

10 to 15 minutes isn’t going to get you a good Logo, though, and a bad Logo will sink your branding faster than a boat anchor chained to a dog biscuit. So where do you get a good Logo? Here are three suggestions, from best to worst case scenario.

It’s probably the last thing you want to hear, but any business owner who’s serious about building a successful business from the ground up needs to develop multiple skills. As an Ebiz owner, you need to have some familiarity with graphics software like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. If you spend some time with it, you can come up with a Logo on your own. Just make sure to study other successful Logos in your market and take your time.

Or, you could find a friend or family member who’s good at sketching or drawing and work with them.

Finally, if you must, you can try to find a designer who will spend more than 15 minutes on your Logo. You WILL have to pay them a pretty chunky amount of money for their time, though, if you expect a reasonable Logo in return.

Remember that your Logo will be greatly influenced by the other parts of your Identity Package; your Site Name and your Tagline, so they must be developed first.

Logos come in several forms:

Word Mark – this Logo form is simply the name of the company written out in a stylized font with no graphics. Think Disney.

Icon – this Logo form is simply a graphic that stands on its own. Think Apple.

Lettermark – this form of Logo is the initials of a company name in a stylized text font with no graphics. Think CNN.

Combination Mark – this form of Logo uses both a Word Mark and an Icon. Think Adobe.

Emblem – this form of Logo consist of words or letters inside a graphic design. Think Harley-Davidson.

Our CozyKitchenToasters.com site name could use any of these forms of Logo, as can most site name and Tagline combinations.

4. WHAT'S NEXT?

As the business owner, it’s up to you to learn to provide the creativity to build a good Identity Package for branding your web site. Your real-world business success depends on it.

Want to learn a whole lot more extremely important things you need to do for your business? Of course you do! Check out my FREE EBiz Insider Video Series at ChrisMalta.com. I'll teach you 'til you drop. :o)

Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time!