It’s way too common for people to overlook the connection between a consistent User Experience (UX) and a strong Branding. While they’re completely different aspects of digital products, there must be a close connection between them to achieve success. The truth is that people don’t understand the importance of branding to succeed as a business. Plus, many misconceptions exist about branding and how companies should approach it.
The problem lies in the gap between what experts define as objective reality and subjective expectations. Building a brand that users recognize and trust requires you to completely understand the problem you’re trying to solve for them. In other words, you must incorporate User Experience findings into your brand strategy. Let’s dive a little deeper into that.
What is Branding?
If you think your brand is your business logo, ads, visual elements, graphic elements, and overall impressions of your marketing campaigns and efforts. I’m afraid you’re wrong. It isn’t the promise you make to your users or the story you tell them about you and your business strategy either. However, all these aspects of branding do have an impact. Customizable QR codes, for example, can be a dynamic part of your branding toolkit, allowing you to create personalized experiences that align with your brand identity and engage users in memorable ways. Your brand is the reputation you have managed to build, so it's how users perceive your company. It’s what makes you different from the rest. Therefore, it lies in users’ heads and hearts. That helps explain why over 80% of potential customers state that trust and authenticity are vital when deciding which brand to support and buy from.
As a result, consistent branding practices go down to how you intend your target audience to perceive your business. Branding involves some of the brand misconceptions we mentioned above while it also encompasses your Value Proposition, Mission, Values, and Business Culture. Yet, it also includes Design Process, and Design Decisions with elements such as typography and color, that strongly influence your brand and can increase awareness by 80%. Your brand will be what users make of all these aspects. It’s a result that shows how they feel about your business and what it means to them.
What is User Experience (UX)?
User Experience (UX) involves every touchpoint users have when interacting with a product or service. It’s about how they feel when using it, from the very first to the last contact. Effective User Experience Design involves thorough Research, Accessibility, Prototyping, and Usability Testing. The main goal is to solve users' problems by providing pleasant experiences. One of the most important aspects of UX is empathizing with users.
UX Designers strongly focus on getting meaningful insights from users and unveiling their pain points, motivations, and desires. Some common methods include surveys, direct interviews, testing, and analytics. Paying close attention to the findings you get with an open mind will help bridge the gap between objective reality and subjective expectations. It will validate whatever assumptions you have about your target audience. Let’s explore how to combine that with branding and why it’s so important.
How to Combine Branding and User Experience (UX)?
Think of firms of attorneys or accountants. Due to the nature of these services, it’s natural for their clients to demand transparency, trust, credibility, diligence, earnestness, and other attributes of that nature. They will undoubtedly try to incorporate these values into their brands. Yet, it’s up to them to bring that to the experiences they give to their clients. That’s what will define their reputation (brand). Similarly, when a company places simplicity and innovation at the core of its brand, it must follow through by delivering products that embody these values.
Businesses that manage to guarantee brand coherence and consistency get the best results. That’s obviously much easier said than done. Why? Because, as mentioned above, it involves everything. Imagine a company offering a product or service that gets the job done, but their customer service is deplorable. What would you think about that brand? What if a mobile app has a stunning User Interface, but it’s frustrating to use? That will surely harm that brand. As you can see, building a reputable brand takes a lot of hard work. You must strive for excellence at every touchpoint users have with your business.
Validating your assumptions about users lays the foundation to design your brand strategy. Your brand is your reputation. If you want your reputation to depict trust, value, and authenticity, you must align your brand attributes with your target audience. Also, consider that every interaction users have with your product contributes to the overall perception of your brand. Incorporating your brand attributes into every experience users have with your product will also affect the overall UX. That helps reinforce credibility and reliability. UX design and Branding work as a pendulum swing. They go back and forth.
In the early stages, UX findings help you define your brand identity and personality. That involves choosing the right colors, typography, logos, messaging, mission, tone, attributes, etc. That helps you tell a story, showing how you stand out from the crowd. In a way, it does work as a promise. Then, integrating everything you promised into every touchpoint or interaction users have with your product will ultimately define your brand. Again, that’s why it’s a result.
Conclusion
Users are the ones who ultimately decide what your company’s reputation is, as they dictate what your brand represents. Therefore, it’s highly advisable to connect your product's User Experience through branding. Actually, the core brand message will be part of the emotions and feelings your users will have during the entire process of their Customer Journey. Don’t overlook the power of UX! It is critical when providing a seamless experience to your users. Therefore, they're vital to building a reputable brand and a successful strategy to reach your business goals. As a UX-driven full-cycle digital agency that offers branding services, we know how important an enjoyable User Experience and Brand are for creating top-notch digital experiences!
