Top 7 Tips for Branding Your Ecommerce Business Before the Holidays

This blog was written by Robert Rand, SVP of Rand Marketing. Educated at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, Robert has managed the development and marketing of hundreds of websites. He’s best known as one of the foremost experts in eCommerce strategies in the USA. Along with Rand Marketing’s award-winning team, he helps clients take their businesses to the next level by employing best practices, while staying at the forefront of Digital Marketing technologies. 

When Your Branding is Working

Great branding often seems natural, like things are exactly as they should be. While rooted in the arts, branding doesn’t require you to enlist the services of a modern day Picasso or Van Gogh. It does, however, require you to work with professionals who understand your target audience, goals, and budgets. It’s also best addressed holistically, making sure that your logo, graphics, fonts, and colors are used consistently throughout not only your website but also through your other web collateral. Here are some tips to help ensure that your branding is working for you:

1. Branding begins with your logo. This one graphic helps to set the tone for your business’s identity. It conveys who you are in a way that is memorable. When a shopper sees your logo, they gain a first glimpse at who you are as a business. When they see it again in the future, it helps them to mentally connect what they’re seeing with previous experience with your organization.
2. Choose a color palette and fonts that compliment your logo. Use these uniformly throughout your website.
3. This branding is applied throughout your website. This includes the various page types on your site, like the homepage, product, category, and blog pages. It is used top-to-bottom, from the headers down to the footers. It is also used for elements used for the mobile version of your site or any mobile apps.
4. Unique graphics on your site such as seasonal banners use your branding, as well as your elements like buttons (ex. Add to Cart).
5. Your Emails match your branding. This includes Transaction Emails sent by your eCommerce website, Marketing Emails, and even email Signatures in your day-to-day business correspondence.
6. Your extended digital presence, such as on social media and major online directories, follow this branding as well. Many sites will allow you to update your logo and add banners or other collateral. Similarly, any banner ads or other materials that you use to promote your business should be updated accordingly.
7. Your printed materials match your online marketing, including any printed materials used in conjunction with your shipments to your customers. This includes envelopes, flyers, business cards, and any custom printed boxes, packing tape, or labels. For those with brick-and-mortar sales channels, this includes signage and in-store collateral.

Bonus Tip

If you’ve created strong branding, and you have the resources, consider creating unique holiday-centric graphics. While many businesses create homepage banners around holidays like Christmas (including for Black Friday sales), some take it a step further. You can potentially use a holiday-themed version of your logo, or even update graphical elements, like your website’s background, for different seasons and holidays. This leaves your site looking more active, lively, and up-to-date, but must still align with your branding and not be too distracting from your calls to action. Similarly themed versions of your branding can be used for Email Marketing and other collateral, as well. The best part is that you can re-use some of these elements next year.

When in doubt, bring in an eCommerce agency that offers comprehensive branding solutions. Whether you need a consultation, a new logo, a comprehensive style guide, or a team to apply your new branding to your web and print assets, a firm that specializes in E-commerce branding can help to make sure that you have a plan for a successful branding process.