Boston — As more companies extend their services to the Web, designers are being challenged to create a unique online identity that not only supports the company’s corporate brand, but that does not undermine the user’s experience, according to two creative directors who spoke at Seybold Seminars here today.
“Brand is not simply about identity design anymore,” said Kristen Beveridge, creative director of iXL, an Internet media company based in Atlanta, Georgia.
To prove the point, Beveridge and Susan Easton, also a creative director at iXL, ran through an exercise in which the audience was asked to identify Web sites based on the site design itself – the corporate logos were covered up. While many in the 75-person audience were able to shout out the correct answers, the point was clear: Without their strong corporate logos, sites such as Yahoo, Excite, and Alta Vista were dismayingly similar. The user interface, the layout, the color palette, even the same neutral editorial tone appeared interchangeable.
In an interactive world, designers need to incorporate the user’s experiences more than ever. The online customer is not a set of passive eyeballs but a participant in the brand environment. A successful online brand, contended Beveridge and Easton, must be:
- Memorable and distinctive
- Relevant to the customer
- Useful and usable
- Efficient
- Consistent with its implied service promise
While three of the above requirements could be applied to static media as well, the areas of usability and efficiency are critical to the online branding experience. For example, Easton pointed out that companies who are geared to selling wares online need to make that experience as easy as possible. “It shouldn’t take seven clicks when it could be two clicks,” she said.
Interactive branding generally revolves around five components – content, community, commerce, customization, and customer care. The two creative directors showed five sites that they felt achieved at least one of these key components:
Content
MSNBC: “This site is all about content,” Easton said, noting its strong structure and story hierarchy. News is dynamically updated and located in an easy-to-use index. Consistent with its mission, the site relies on straightforward news photography instead of cute graphics or illustrations. “Brands aren’t just visuals,” Easton noted. “It’s also about voice and tone.”
Commerce
: Much as a retail drug store shelves items in the same place every day, drugstore.com offers the online equivalent. The site’s navigation and architecture is consistent, predictable, and useful. Shoppers know when they move from department to department, from toothpaste to aspirin. Because shopping habits differ among customers, the site provides different modes of entry for the browsing customer or the direct customer. “In a commerce focussed site, you need to give your users many ways to get to the information,” Beveridge said.
Customization
Barbie.com: Mattel stands for fun. Barbie’s site builds on the hugely successful brand by allowing kids to have a Barbie-like experience. The my design™ area of Barbie.com lets kids build their own doll online, with options for skin color, hair, outfits, and even career and personality attributes. Note that Barbie herself isn’t meddled with – that brand remains intact – but Mattel embeds the idea of Barbie into a personal interaction that engages kids and adults alike.
Community
iVillage.com: Of the many women’s oriented sites now emerging, iVillage.com successfully leverages its user community as part of its brand. Women can chat online, share ideas, and ask for help in a non-intimidating environment. Barriers to chat participation are minimal and feedback is immediate. “There’s a lot of potential for community participation when creating an online brand,” Easton said.
Customer Care
LandsEnd.com: The site for the clothing retailer Lands’ End offers a personalized shopping experience through its Lands’ End Live feature. While on the site, a visitor can go message a customer service representative for assistance in locating goods. In response to real-time queries, the customer service rep may reply with lists of URLs that point the buyer to different areas of the site. Other customer-oriented services include Your Personal Model, in which a customer can select a model based on body type and receive clothing suggestions based on that profile. Lands’ End also has a feature in which you can invite a friend to accompany you online as you browse the site – like shopping with a friend at the mall.
Suggesting future directions in online branding and Web site design, Beveridge and Easton showed an early version of a site they’ve been working on for shoe maven Kenneth Cole. The site is thought provoking in that it allows a customer to shop by a look, or an ensemble, as depicted beautifully photographed scene. To purchase it, you simply click on the shoe within the image, and you’re able to buy it. The designers called the feature “instant gratification.”
Both Beveridge and Easton believe that the next wave in Web site design and branding is the union of content and commerce. Let’s say you’re looking at a Web site about the parties after the Golden Globe Awards, and you see a starlet wearing a dress that you covet immediately. Soon, you’ll be able to click on the dress and go directly to a site that sells it.
Move over, Gwyneth.
This article was last modified on February 8, 2000
This article was first published on February 8, 2000
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