5 things to think about with your brand before a website build

A strong, cohesive brand guides the design and content and ensures your site delivers meaningful impact for your audiences. Here are five considerations to get your brand ready ahead of a website build.

1. Clarify your brand fundamentals

Before jumping into a website project, revisit your brand’s foundations to ensure consistency and focus. Starting with these elements ensures the website aligns with your organisation’s identity and goals from the outset.

Mission, vision and values

Define your purpose and goals. These should guide every page, user journey and interaction on your site.

Tone of voice and language guidelines

Your tone should reflect who you are and enable you to create content that makes sense to your audiences. Clear guidelines help ensure this consistency across all content.

Key audiences and messaging

Understand your primary audiences and anyone else you want to speak to, and tailor your messaging to their needs. Your website should speak directly to their context, needs, and values. Any proper website process will focus time on this but if you have a strong understanding of where you already speak to your audiences and what resonates you’ll make the most of that process.

2. Understand your audience’s needs and context

Your audience’s experience is at the heart of your website’s success. Website projects should spend time getting to know the people that you’re designing for, their context and what they need.

Understanding these journeys will lead to a user-centred design that feels intuitive and inclusive.

Jobs to be done

Identify the specific tasks users come to your site to accomplish, whether donating, seeking information, or contacting your team.

Key journeys

Plan pathways through your site that guide users effortlessly to their goals.

3. Audit your visual identity

Your website will be one of the main touchpoints that people interact with your brand. It needs to visually and emotionally resonate with people who know you. Visual consistency across your website strengthens your brand by fostering trust with your audience.

As part of this step, you should also establish your accessibility standards and principles, to ensure the site is usable for everyone, including people with disabilities.

Photography and Illustration

Ensure you have a library of high-quality, on-brand imagery. Plan photoshoots if needed to create authentic, consistent visuals that can be used in a range of different formats across the website.

Digital colour palette

Adapt your brand colours for web use, ensuring high contrast to meet accessibility standards.

Icons and brand devices

Use these elements to reinforce your brand identity and enhance user experience - ensuring that you have them in all the right formats for use across digital channels.

4. Address technical and legal considerations

A website build involves technical and regulatory decisions that should align with your brand’s values and goals. Having these elements ready helps streamline the build and ensures your site meets both user and regulatory expectations.

Font licensing

Ensure fonts are properly licensed for digital use. Avoid substitutes that don’t reflect your wider brand in digital channels.

Legal requirements

Prepare privacy policies, cookie notices, and other compliance documents in advance. Make sure they’re written in a way that people can understand and fit with your tone of voice.

5. Learn from the other organisations that your audiences will see

Take inspiration from other brands and set clear benchmarks for success. Run a competitor analysis and study websites you admire. What works well? What would you do differently? Pay particular attention to organisations that have similar audiences and are trying to achieve the same kind of impact as you. People visiting your website are likely to be familiar with their brands.

Looking ahead ensures your website remains relevant and impactful long after launch.

Summary

Starting with a well-defined brand sets the foundation for a successful website build. From tone of voice to audience journeys, accessibility to scalability, aligning your brand with your website’s goals ensures an efficient build process and a site that truly works for your organisation.

Remember, your website is often your principal brand touchpoint – make it count.