5 key characteristics of web brands
According to market researchers Millward Brown Optimor, Google is the most powerful brand of 2007. While discussing this, Gerry McGovern writes that the 5 most important characteristics of web brands are:
- Web brands are useful
- They have a clarity of purpose
- The embrace simplicity
- They interact and engage
- They are customer-centric
Now, maybe your business isn’t Google. Maybe your business is selling real live widgets in a brick-and-mortar shop. Even so, if you have a web site, these characteristics of web brands still apply. If your web site isn’t simple to use, doesn’t do what the customer needs it to do, and doesn’t make it easy for the customer to interact with your company, then your brand suffers for it. If you’re not easy to do business with online, why would the customer think you are easy to do business with offline? The trick for an offline business, I think, is to clearly evaluate what it is that your web site needs to be useful at. Why would a customer come to your website? What do they need it for? How can it help the customer meet their goals? To succeed online, businesses need to answer those questions, then design a web site that does all these things well. If your web site doesn’t do these things (at the very least), then it’s wasted everyone’s time.