A strong brand results in recognition. With recognition comes familiarity, and familiarity leads to trust – trust that can turn visitors into customers and one-time clients into long-term collaborators.

One of the most important channels through which you present your brand to the world is your website. In fact, 75% of people check out a brand by visiting their site and 75% of their judgement on a website’s credibility is based purely on its aesthetics. Your website branding is therefore a crucial piece of the puzzle in attracting visitors, converting them into customers, and engaging them enough to make them come back.

So how do you ensure the brand image you present on your site is enticing, professional, consistent and unique? 

Here are our top tips.

1. Personalise your site 

This can be done in many different ways, including your logo, the imagery you choose and your website texts.

Logo

Your logo is in many ways the foundation of your brand. It’s the number one brand identifier that grabs the viewers’ attention and creates the critical and often tricky-to-get-right first impression. Not only that but it’s also an element your audiences expect and the lack of which can convey a lack of professionalism – something you should avoid at all costs. 

Images

Another great way to personalise your website is through the imagery you choose to display. While stock images are a great addition that can make your site look more polished and professional at no extra cost, it’s best to supplement them with some personal photos that are unique to you.That can include your headshots, pictures of you in a professional setting, or photos of where you’re based, all of which help your potential clients see the person behind the brand and build an emotional connection to your business. That connection is often key to customer conversion, loyalty and word-of-mouth recommendations, as 94% of people report they’d be highly likely to recommend a brand they are emotionally engaged with!

Video

If you want to take things to the next level, consider adding videos – anything from a short brand intro, through client testimonials to an animated explainer about your services. Videos help to increase the time people spend on your website as well as generate leads, making them a valuable addition to your marketing efforts. 

They are also highly valued by social media algorithms and as such give you a chance to boost your social media presence, which in turn helps to build rapport with your potential clients. Research has shown that 75% of people are more likely to follow a brand on social media if they feature video content and people who follow a brand on social media are three times more likely to form an emotional connection to it – connection that we’ve already established as one of the key incentives for increased client conversion and loyalty!

Text

Lastly, think about what your brand’s personality is and make sure your website texts embody that. What does your brand sound like? Is it luxurious, sophisticated, down to earth, relaxed? The answer you give should be reflected in the tone of voice you use. It will help to personify your business in the eyes of your consumers and distinguish you from other providers in the crowded language services field.

2. Ensure consistency across your branding elements

The top four qualities people use to describe why they are loyal to brand are cost, quality, experience and consistency. Yet brand consistency is often overlooked in favour of the more familiar concepts of cost or quality. In fact, less than 10% of brands maintain a high level of brand consistency across all products and marketing channels. But while your prices and proficiency can be matched by many of your competitors – those already on the market as well hundreds of people entering the freelance translation scene every month – consistency is how you can take your brand to the next level and gain an edge over your professional rivals.

So how do you ensure your branding is consistent?

Start by making sure your logo and your website match. They are a part of the same whole and that should be clear right from the start. Your logo should feature prominently on your site and the two should send a uniform message about your brand identity and its core values.

This can be done through typography choices and a consistent colour palette, as well as the general graphic design style that can range from subtle and elegant to bold and dynamic, or anything in between. 

If your logo is a clean and elegant signature, consider adding the same personal touch to your site by using the same handwritten font to accent parts of your text. If on the other hand, you’ve chosen a bold and dynamic logo that features a gradient colour transition, why not add that same effect to some of your site’s background or other graphic elements? 

It’s those details that can help you elevate the quality of your site and make your brand more coherent, easily recognisable and trustworthy.

3. Blend clarity and creativity

Being creative with your branding choices can set your brand apart and give it personality. But there’s a thin line that separates creativity from chaos and you need to stay on the right side of it to avoid your brand message becoming indecipherable and ultimately lost. 

Make your website distinct – through colour, typography and tone of voice – but never by sacrificing its clarity and functionality.

Be aware that the way people consume content online is different from the way they do it offline. While we read printed content in a linear way (top to bottom, front to back), we tend to use a non-linear pattern when consuming content on the web. 

That means we flick through subheadings, scroll through sections, scan links, read bolded text and the first sentences of paragraphs. We look for specific information and the quicker and easier it is to find, the better. Our attention span is significantly shorter online than offline, and the first 10 seconds will most likely determine whether or not we’ll keep on reading.

Consider that when writing for your website and give your reader what they need, in the way they look for it. Use active voice, highlight important information, place keywords in places where they’ll be more likely to be noticed, and structure your content into short, easily-digestible sections. 

Then, and only then, add a creative spin to it. 

For instance, you might:

• experiment with your site’s layout, 
• add animation to your logo to create a more dynamic look, 
• include a customer journey map that helps to guide your potential clients through the process and inform their decisions,
• add a timeline of your professional journey to allow your clients to learn more about you,
• use colour theory to inform your website branding decisions

Whatever you choose, make sure that apart from being unique and visually pleasing, it has a clear purpose, it targets the audience you’re trying to reach and adds value to your website and the overall presentation of your brand. 

4. Include frequent and varied calls to action

While not one of the most obvious parts of your website branding, calls to action are nevertheless an important element of professional website design that helps to create a more seamless user experience, which in turn has been shown to yield higher conversion rates.

They make your site easier to navigate, increase the likelihood of people learning more about you and your offer and further encourage your site visitors to get in touch – which makes the fact that 70% of small businesses don’t use them on their pages that much more astounding!

From an aesthetic point of view, they are eye-catching and help to further break down the website’s content and make your design look more up-to-date. They also create backlinks, which improve your site’s SEO, making it more likely to rank well in search results. 

To take it a step further, make sure to not only include CTAs on your website but also make them varied. There are different ways in which you can encourage your visitors to get in touch or visit another sub-page, and “Contact” or “Find out more” buttons, while very useful, are not the only options. Use your CTAs to speak directly to your customers and let them you know their needs. A CTA in the Translation section on your site may vary from the one in the Interpreting section. By diversifying and being more specific, you can make your readers feel heard. Take advantage of that opportunity!

5. Use your website to create a seamless, multi-channel experience

Your website should be a part of a larger online presence that spans across multiple channels and presents a consistent brand image throughout. The more channels you are on, the more likely you are to be found by potential clients. And the more coherent your brand image is across these different channels, the more credible and trustworthy you will appear to those clients. 

Integrate your social media into your website, either by adding links to your socials or, if you want to go a step further, integrating your social media feed on the site. Your socials are an extension of your brand and an important one – in fact, 58% of consumers visit a brand’s social media before visiting their website. Integrating them into the site makes your branding more cohesive and helps to establish professionalism and boost credibility.

While the majority of small businesses invest in social media marketing as part of their branding efforts, few of them make their strategy seamless, resulting in a fragmented, and sometimes inconsistent presentation, which instead of helping your brand can hurt it. 

Customers nowadays are more demanding, they expect a certain standard from people or businesses whose services they employ, and they conduct more research about what they invest in. And since their shopping experience has largely shifted from uni-channel to omnichannel, your brand should respond accordingly.

To make your website and overall brand even more appealing and engaging, you might also want to think about starting a blog. Brands with blogs generate 67% more leads that those without. A well-curated blog also gives you a chance to establish your brand as a knowledgeable expert in the field and provide useful, high-quality and shareable content that can further extend your brand’s presence.

Think of your website as part of a digital network, where every element is directly or indirectly connected to every other element. They influence each other and each of them opens up new pathways for you to find and connect with your clients. Not only that, but they also create multiple touch points in your marketing funnel that allow you to collect more data, measure your success and further fine-tune your strategy.

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Is your website branding on point? 

What are some of the areas you think you might want to improve? 

What strategies have you used to convey your brand image and message on your website?