Why is visual identity so important?
A strong visual brand identity is the key to gaining a customer’s interest, trust and loyalty. You want your customers to remember your site and return to it, and thus creating a visually appealing identity for your website is very important. Your visual identity should help to meet the goals of the type of content your website is displaying. Below are some of the main features as to why visual identity is so important.
Personality — The visual identity of a website is vital for building the personality of the content that you wish to portray. Creating the right personality for your website will help to set the tone and essentially target the correct audience for your content. A way of building your personality is through the use of a colour palette. Colours are a great way to set the mood of your website by just a quick glance. For example, darker colours represent a more serious approach to a website and bright colours can represent a more fun and light-hearted website. Below is an example of the pizza company Domino’s, and as you can see they have a very simple colour palette consisting of just red, blue and white. The colours are used to represent cold and hot food which is the company’s selling purpose.
For my website personally, I have decided to stick with a simple colour palette including medium shades of green, white and black. As green is a colour that is often used to represent life, nature and the environment, I feel that it sets an appropriate atmosphere for my content which talks about how to use plastics to protect the environment. I will then use black for my headings and have white as the background of every page. This use of very few colours helps to create a constant brand identity through the website and prevents users from becoming confused and overwhelmed.
Branding — It is important to infiltrate your brand from the very beginning. This includes having a strong trademark and company name which work together nicely. Often when you look at websites, you will find that the trademark is found in the top left corner ( as shown in the example below) or in the centre at the top. This is to instantly attract user attention. Therefore, you must make sure that it is easy to read and stands out from its surroundings so that users will recognise it instantly. You want users to directly move their eyes to your trademark as soon as they visit the website.
Images — Selecting the right images for your website is crucial for your visual identity. The images on your website will instantly provide an insight to the type of content you have on your website. Therefore, you must make sure that all your images are relevant and useful. First of all, your images must be of high quality and not appear blurred or grainy. This would result in users leaving the page if the content is not of high quality. When looking at current websites, you will find a good use of white space around images, allowing them to breathe. This helps to give the user time to look at the image without feeling overpowered with images and text. According to the Social Science Research Network, 65% of the population are visual learners, and thus it is important to use a lot of images to connect with your users and to illustrate the different sections to your site. A good use of this can be seen in the example below. The site has selected one main image to represent the category which will have similar products. I think this looks particularly effective as it appears organised but still has the exciting and playful approach that the website is aiming to achieve. Websites with very little images appear unfinished and engage less with users.
Typeface — Choosing the correct typeface is extremely important when adding to the mood you wish to set for your website. First of all, it must be clear and easy to read, so users can navigate easily down the page without having to stop and reread things. Ideally, two to three typefaces are a nice number to work with without overwhelming the user and appearing too busy on the page. This means you can create an obvious difference between headings and body text just by using different typefaces. However, it is important that these typefaces work well together in order to create a good user experience in terms of readability. Most importantly, the typography you choose should be used to demonstrate the purpose of your site. For example, if you have a creative company, you can express this by using bold and decorative typefaces to give your website an innovative look. However, if your company reflects serious content, you should choose a typeface that is easy to read and simple in order to reflect this. For example, as you can see in the image below, Ulster Bank use quite a simple typeface which portrays a serious attitude and thus reflects on the company’s purpose as a bank.
The overall reason as to why these features are so important is because you want your website to stand out against competitors. Therefore, creating a website with a great visual identity and user navigation etc, will make your website more desirable to users over other competing websites.
