Actually, whether or not you love your website doesn’t matter all that much. What matters is whether or not your ideal customer loves your website. If you’ve done some deep breathing and heavy lifting around figuring out your brand, you know who that ideal customer is and what resonates with them. That’s the kind of information you can then hand off to your web guy (I’m pretty sure that’s an official term) and your content creator so they can cheerfully turn out a website that rocks.

Websites have changed a lot in the last five years and they will continue to change going forward. The pace of evolution is a little frightening, actually, and this is one area where it’s tough to stay current. When I finally decided to take the plunge and invest in my first website, I didn’t know anything about websites, other than that it was long past time for my business to have one. At the time, websites were mostly what we’re now calling “brochure” websites – they contained information about your business, much like a brochure would, but WOW it’s on the Internet!!! The downside was that most websites weren’t all that attractive because the highly technical people in our world held the keys to the internet kingdom and graphic designers were still figuring out how to stake their claim to the wild world of digital design.

In fact, that still holds true today: most web designers I meet are technical people who will make your website look as good as they can. But back in the dawn of my business’s internet debut, I wanted an attractive website, one that was visually consistent with my brand, so that when people arrived at my url, thanks to the business card I had given them, they felt like there was a match, that they had found my place of business, and that they felt encouraged to find out more about me.

When there is no visual match between your website and your other branded materials, people will have the unsettling experience of getting to your site and wondering if they’re in the wrong place. The mismatch happens primarily at a subconscious level, and, as I’ve said before, the brain reads inconsistency as unreliability and you really don’t want people feeling in any way, shape or form that you are unreliable. You want every step of your relationship with them to confirm a consistent brand experience, and your website is a key part of that process. It needs to look good. Somebody with a strong understanding of the role visual imagery plays in marketing needs to be involved in the design.

I’ll have more to say about the importance of graphic design in brand development in my next blog but in the meantime, if you would like to connect with me to find out more about how Crossman Communications can help you tell your business story through your online content, please connect with me at susan@crossmancommunications.com. If you’re in a hurry, book yourself in right away for a free consultation at www.meetme.so/susancrossman.