Using your Website to Shape Corporate Identity
Written by Smartt Team on August 15, 2009
Corporate identity is a tricky concept. It’s not just about your logo, banners, marketing techniques and the way you present yourself to the world. In fact, it’s much more than that. It’s about the way your customers perceive you and what they think of your company as a whole. In this regard, corporate identity is something that is not fully within your control.
However, it’s not completely out of your control either. There are certain actions you can take online to help shape the perception of your company.
Your website is the most important space your company has on the web. It’s where customers go to evaluate your business and your products and to find out more about you. Your website is your face on the web and as such it’s important that you let it work for you and not against you.
These days having a website is more important than ever. In fact, your customers expect you to have a website. It’s no longer an option, it’s a necessity. Having a well designed site will no longer wow your customers, it’s just expected that you will have a professional site. On the flip side, not having a website will hurt you and your corporate image. You will be perceived as unprofessional and untrustworthy in the eyes of your customers.
A well structured site that contains lots of useful and informative information gives the impression that your company cares about its customers and wants to help them. People like businesses that are helpful and that they can trust. Using your website as a hub for information will help shape that perception that you care about your customers and their needs. Providing useful information related to your industry is the best way to get people to trust you.
People who visit corporate websites want to find the information they need quickly and easily. Product information and content should never be hidden deep within the site. As a good rule of thumb, customers should be able to find whatever information they’re looking for in three clicks or less.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can begin to utilize your website to further shape your corporate identity. A website that effectively expresses your corporate identity to your clients includes the following aspects:
- Easy to understand presentation of information. The web has brought about many changes in the way people read and understand information. No longer do people have the patience to read long, drawn-out paragraphs and pages like those found in books. People want short, snappy sentences that are easy to understand. When writing for the web, it’s a good rule of thumb to imagine you’re writing for an eight-year old child. This way, customers won’t get lost in frivolous and hard to understand language. Instead they can focus on what it is you’re really saying.
- Use white space. White space simply refers to the areas of your website where there isn’t any text or images. Keeping paragraphs short and skipping lines between paragraphs creates lots of white space and helps keep people focused. Headings, bullets and numbered lists are also excellent ways to add white space to your pages.
- Create a look and feel that expresses your company’s personality. If your company is fun, vibrant and lively, create a website that reflects that. No matter what look you’re going for, the best websites are clean, simple and to the point. Cluttered sites that contain too much information or too many links leave customers feeling uneasy.
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