Why Websites Need Pin-sharp Brand Positioning

Could you explain what sets you apart from your competitors? Maybe you can. Maybe you could, but now that point of differentiation isn’t as clear as it once was.

Now look at your website. Or even better, find someone who has never heard of your business before. Can they, as a first-time visitor, understand who you are, what you do, and what makes you, well, you?

If the answer is a no, or maybe not, then there’s some work to be done here. And it’s not the website that you should be pointing the finger at, as we’ll discover and discuss shortly. The work, in the first instance, is to sharpen up your brand’s position.

Because your brand’s position isn’t just what you say you are - it is what people experience when they encounter your brand. And that first encounter is almost always the homepage of your website. 

You see, your website is no longer just the digital advertisement of your business or not-for-profit, and it’s not even a storefront or an online catalogue of your services. For most audiences, or increasingly the audiences that carry the most commercial clout, your website is your core brand asset.

And if you've completed several rounds of optimisation and reviewed your digital marketing strategy with no real uplift in website performance, it might be time to step back for a minute. Because if your website isn't waving the flag of your brand's competitive edge with absolute clarity, then it's time to take a fresh look at your brand positioning.

What is brand positioning?

So we’re all on the same page, your brand positioning is not your visual identity; colour palette, fonts and logo marks. 

Try to think of your brand’s position in these two ways:

• the space your brand occupies in the mind of your customers
• the guiding principle to inform all your brand decisions

In short, your brand position determines how your audience understands you, and trusts you. 

The brand shift and the brand drift

I’m not suggesting that brand positioning is something businesses are always getting all wrong, or didn't have right to begin with. The reality is much more nuanced than that. 

Where positioning gets foggy in existing brands, it’s often down to one of two things; a brand shift, or a brand drift. 

Let’s take a look:

The brand shift — where the brand has recognised that their business has moved on, or that the competitive landscape has changed, but the brand positioning work hasn’t been done, or simply hasn’t made it off the slide deck yet. For example; a legacy consumer brand with a recent influx of direct-to-consumer brands in their market, or a charity focusing on a long-term issue which has been reframed by public discourse or current events, would both need to shift their positioning to clarify where they stand on the matter.

The brand drift — more subtle and much harder to spot, we see drift in positioning when the stewardship of brand guidelines, core values and marketing and communication messages is too loose. Not to point the finger at marketing departments here; on the flip side brand drift can also occur when operations consistently fall short of brand promises. The point is; in the dynamic, digital landscape brands live in, brands can inadvertently drift in another direction, losing the distinction they held in their audience’s mind.

What’s the difference between brand positioning and brand strategy?

We’ve already got the definition of brand positioning nailed at the top of this article, so let’s define brand strategy:
Brand strategy is your blueprint that sets out how your brand looks, behaves, and functions to achieve your brand positioning. 

When we’re talking about the components of brand strategy here at Mud, we’re usually referring to:

• core brand values
• visual identity 
• verbal identity
• the digital brand
• marketing and communication strategy
   

The brand positioning is the guiding principle; the brand strategy is the framework to communicate it to your audience, and keep it alive and well in their minds from the point of discovery.

Why your website is now the cornerstone of your brand strategy

Websites began life as publishing platforms, and evolved to become digital stores and a digital marketing channel to advertise your services or cause. When you get down to the bones of them, arguably they still are: you write up the brand values and the marketing copy, you upload the image assets, and you hit publish.

But that was 10-20 years ago, and now your website is the primary expression of your brand for new customers. The static, fixed spaces of print media and brick and mortar have given way to a brand expression which is far more responsive and interactive: the digital brand.

And this is because websites themselves have moved away from static landing pages presenting information, to be altogether more experiential. Now, we can make websites that act in response to human behaviour. Think interactive animations, motion, conversations — all working together to define who you are and what your brand personality feels like.

The brands who do this right have really beautiful websites which are the central brand positioning tool, and the core strategic brand asset. They are a true expression of the brand identity, and underpin the brand strategy with thoughtfully-designed UX interfaces and journeys, and considered functionality which is all designed to funnel web visitors towards conversion - whatever that looks like for your particular brand.

How brand positioning shapes web design decisions

I can advocate for websites no longer being treated as mere publishing platforms, but how does your brand strategy inform your website design? And what creative devices do you have to build a website to be a true expression of your brand’s positioning?

There are five areas which each will influence how effective your brand expresses itself in a digital context:

1. Visual language. The most obvious, so we’ll start with this. As our Principal Designer, Matt French explains in his recent article, your visual identity is the face of your brand identity, and what makes you instantly recognisable online. So, it needs to be accurate and consistent across all touchpoints.
2. Verbal Identity. The language and tone of voice your brand uses to communicate is central to your brand positioning anywhere. Your website is your opportunity to completely own the narrative of your brand; from brand copy, to UX microcopy supporting call-to-actions. Your choice of words, tone and rhythm will inform how your audience connects with you.
3. Art direction. Think; illustration, graphics, photography, a creative interpretation of your brand’s positioning offer real competitive differentiation in crowded digital marketplaces. The visual cues from your art direction will work with your verbal cues to help your audience understand who you are, what you do, and how you do it.
4. Motion and interaction. The ability to animate web interfaces has allowed brands to further shape their digital brand identity with how they ‘behave’. The movement, pace and interactive behaviour that can be coded into websites taps into how people perceive your brand on a deeper level. It’s no longer just about what people see, but even more about how they feel. Motion makes you memorable.
5. Structure and hierarchy. The visual and graphic elements so often steal the focus when it comes to brand identity, but what you lead with, and what you use to reinforce your position is arguably just as important. Visual and messaging hierarchy, the structure of your website and individual pages, all determine the kind of meaningful, first impression your brand makes on your audience, and whether this amounts to sustained connection and relevance over time.

How sharp brand positioning and strategy builds strong websites

When Base Structures came to Mud, they’d already identified ‘the brand shift’. They redefined their brand positioning in the built environment sector, and articulated a set of values and personality. Although their website offered a comprehensive catalogue of their work to prospective clients, they recognised it didn’t reflect their new brand positioning in the built environment sector, and was no longer fit for purpose.

They tasked us with building a new website, but it was clear there was still work to be done translating the positioning work into a defined brand strategy. 

Our concept, ‘Tension Builds’, was all about capturing the imagination of design-focused audiences with the dynamic forces at play in tensile fabric engineering. It pinpointed the fundamental strength of their specialism; that tensile fabric can be engineered into extraordinary spatial design solutions that are inherently more flexible, more bespoke and more practical than typical architectural responses.

This concept effectively tied up their brand positioning into a fresh, bold strategic direction that shaped the visual identity into something more energetic; a high contrast colour palette with bright accents, strong, clean typography, and graphic design that echoed the fabric structure’s defining curves.

The website was our opportunity to bring this brand concept, this feeling of tension, right down to the finger tips of web users (read, potential clients). The linear elements tighten, stretch and bounce in response to scrolling behaviour, creating an interactive user experience that is supercharged with the dynamic energy of the Base team. 

The result is a high-impact digital platform that not only defines the Base Structure brand in their category, but brings their narrative and the extraordinary stories of their projects builds to life.

What to do when brand positioning and strategy break down

Brand drift is a risk in digital spaces where the pace of business operations or marketing and communications campaigns impact adherence to best practice or brand guidelines. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the less consistency there is in your brand strategy, the weaker your brand’s position will be.

Don’t start writing your new design brief just yet. Instead, conduct an audit of your website, and then get your competitors websites up on the screen. How effectively does your website communicate what differentiates you from your competitors? 

If it takes web users to be three pages deep into your website before they can understand what you do, then you know your brand strategy needs some work. If your audience can’t understand what makes you different to your competitors, then your brand positioning needs some sharpening up.

Because your website is more than just your digital presence — it’s your digital brand.

Take a look at the recent brand and digital project we did for Base Structures, built on the groundwork of their new brand positioning.