Before Website Development, Think Brand

The process of web design and web development revolves around your brand. After all, you can't build a cohesive online marketing strategy with a website that doesn't match your corporate identity. So before beginning a website development project, it's important to take a look at your brand and ensure it's where you want it to be.

Branding and corporate identity are extremely important to any company's future. Logos, color palettes, and look-and-feel create a first impression which can either entice or turn off a new customer. A company's corporate identity isn't just a logo. It's also the graphic representation of their vision and personality as a company, which is communicated by triggering a subconscious feeling through visual elements. It's extremely important that your brand triggers the positive feelings you're hoping to communicate!

Corporate identity is a cohesive package of consistent use of logos, colors, and messaging. For example; whenever you see McDonald's "golden arches" you know it's McDonald's without a doubt. If the arches were blue at a store, you would be confused ... is that McDonald's or not? That type of visual presence is very strong and holds value in their customers' minds. This is an example of a properly executed brand.

Several of IdeaEngine's most recent website design clients realized they needed to update their logos and corporate identity to compete in bigger markets before they began the process of building a website. As you can see, the newly updated logos are clean, modern, and give a more professional feel. See the before and after logos below.

North Coast Container Corp: Brand Overhaul as Part of Website Strategy

North Coast Container Corporation decided to re-brand their company to update their style and get more competitive in the market. They have a great product and are highly respected, but their corporate identity and website needed a refresh. They announced their new identity at their Christmas party this past year, which was a big hit! They wanted to make sure the employees and customers knew of the changes and embraced them. The new identity and website under development by IdeaEngine will help the company grow and establish a larger presence in their industry.

The North Coast Container design strategy is based on a modern font that is clean and round, and the use of the large "C" graphic element echoes their 55 gallon drum products. They wanted to stay in the blue family, so we updated the colors by using two different blues, emphasizing the more modern, light blue, and we incorporated the grey to allude to the metal drums that are the the foundation of all their products.

ClinicalRM: Corporate Identity That Really Says Who They Are

“When we started our business nearly two decades ago, web URLs and email addresses had very little to do with an identity," said Victoria Tifft, CEO and Founder of ClinicalRM, when she contracted IdeaEngine to re-brand her organization before a major web development project. "Since then, the world has come to rely on your web identity as your corporate identify. Our reputation has grown steadily through the years through word of mouth, [but] in this day and age, we need to make it easy for our prospective clients to find us and hear the ClinicalRM story.”

IdeaEngine created a much fresher brand identity, incorporating a deep blue that expresses ClinicalRM's solid, reliable reputation, and a trendier green to reflect their cutting-edge approach to their work. The use of the double helix graphic element represents the human aspect of their work. This, combined with the crisp, clean font and generous white space illustrate precision, accuracy, trustworthiness, honor, and quality.

When ClinicalRM's new brand was locked down, the web design process began. Because ClinicalRM understood the importance of brand and identity, they included a page on their newly designed website to explain to their customers why they did their rebranding.

Isabella & Company, CPAs: Brand Refresh as Online Marketing Strategy

Isabella and Company also came to us to give them a fresh new look. As a firm that help companies with more then just accounting – they are partners in their customers' growth by bringing creative solutions to the table – they wanted to seem more fun, fresh, young, and creative than their typical competitor.

Isabella & Company, CPAs’ new brand identity blends strong text, subtle graphic elements, and a clean font with a lot of white space. The reversed cross-bar in the As subtly allude to an upward arrow and connotation of growth while feeling like a fresh, creative element. Combined with the powerful font and use of strong red, it illustrates a corporate feel with a touch of youth and energy.

When considering your own website strategy, IdeaEngine always recommends a careful, thoughtful analysis of your corporate identity. It's important that your first impression – whether offline or online – speaks the message you want your visitors to hear.