Your brand in the Web2.0 age

Richard Anderson, Head of Design, discusses what current user trends mean for you and your brand.

In the early days of the web, companies rushed to put their brand online with little consideration for the way in which people behave online. Indeed, in those days understanding of the online user was often difficult to attain. Getting your logo on the web was often seen as the end in itself, just ‘being there’ deemed important. But then what?

The situation improved as companies began to properly track performance, requiring their online presence to provide tangible business benefit. Successful sites provided their users with clearer, more consistent navigation, improved browsing routes and improved content.

The smart ones also began to let go of the ‘matching luggage’ approach to branding. No longer applying branding so rigidly across different media that their online presence was denied room to breathe or reach its potential. The realisation that in a new media age radically different mediums could benefit from different incarnations of the brand began to spread.

The rise of social networking

Now, a decade on from those early days, there are newer patterns of behaviour which are already becoming well established.

Observers have noted that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are not just offering users the ability to reach others, they are also providing a mechanism for people to create a public image for themselves. Or to put it another way, they are allowing individuals to create their own brand. They can define their own imagery and even attribute certain values to themselves and ‘position’ themselves by associating themselves with others.

New challenges and opportunities

What does this mean for you? How might these individual ‘user brands’ seek to interact with you online?

The ability for individuals to participate on your site is one area to consider. Amazon has been allowing customers to review and recommend products for years and such participation has greatly increased their ability to convert and retain. User generated content not only provides a means of publicly sharing valuable customer endorsement, but can increase your search engine visibility.

If you have a niche product, your customers may respond to the ability to talk to others of like mind in a forum, write a blog, or share their photographs. Based on such participation online communities may coalesce around your site, mutually reinforcing their interest in your offering and attracting others. Those individual ‘user brands’ may ‘position’ themselves by associating themselves with your brand.

Another area you may wish to explore is personalisation - allowing your customers the ability to make elements of your site their own. The BBC has recently taken a major step down this road with a fully customisable homepage, attracting a lot of attention. Depending on the nature of your business, you may even wish to allow users to play with your online brand and make it their own. Around core elements you may wish to consider loosening your grip, allowing your customers to manipulate your site’s appearance and perhaps even the layout.

Online, the notion that you can simply tell the consumer what you represent is being challenged. The smart brands in the future are the ones who enable their customers to do it for them.

A word of caution though. Simply providing the online user with free social networking facilities can run the risk of them having a great time at your expense. It is vital that you properly plan and design such features with a clear focus on maximising the benefit to your business.

Just as simply ‘being there’ was not enough in the past, so blindly jumping into the ‘Web 2.0’ world is not an end in itself now.

Put conversion at the heart of your strategy.