A website redesign presents a major opportunity to upgrade your online presence. But it also risks disrupting the brand familiarity you’ve worked so hard to build. When undertaking a website overhaul, maintaining brand consistency throughout the process is crucial.
Your visual identity, messaging, tone of voice, and other brand elements should remain recognizable before, during, and after the redesign. By thoughtfully evolving your online brand experience, you can modernize your website while still being unmistakably you.
Here are tips for keeping brand consistency during your next website redesign project:
Conduct a Brand Audit
Before redesigning anything, complete a comprehensive brand audit. Review your existing branding and web presence with a critical eye.
- Analyze logo, color scheme, typography, imagery, and other visual identity assets. Note any inconsistencies or weaknesses.
- Survey brand messaging and voice across platforms. Is the tone consistent? Does it resonate?
- Evaluate current web content. Is it on-brand, high-quality, and distinct?
- Assess online user experience. Are navigation, layout, and features intuitive and effective?
Document what’s working, what needs improvement, and where there are gaps. This brand snapshot will guide your redesign.
Refine Your Brand Strategy
Next, clarify your brand strategy and what the ideal experience should convey. Spell out specifics:
- Core brand attributes and personality traits
- Emotions you want to evoke in customers
- Key messages and value propositions to spotlight
- Desired tone of voice and imagery style
This brand strategy will steer the aesthetics and functionality of your redesigned website. Use it as a touchstone for decision-making throughout the process.
Establish a Style Guide
An extensive style guide ensures visual consistency as you redesign. Include guidelines for:
- Logo usage – sizing, spacing, positioning, approved variations
- Color palette – primary, secondary, and accent colors
- Typography – fonts, sizes, and line heights for headings/body text
- Graphic elements – buttons, icons, widgets, backgrounds
- Imagery – product photos, lifestyle shots, graphics, editing style
- Illustration style – character design, scene composition, medium (vector, 3D, etc.)
Distribute this style guide to stakeholders and the redesign team to align efforts. Use it to maintain harmony across the website, branding, ads, and other touchpoints.
Update Visual Assets Strategically
With brand consistency as the goal, thoughtfully evolve your visual identity.
Modernize the logo design if needed, without drastically altering recognizable elements. Freshen up photography and illustrations in the existing style. Expand the color palette without abandoning core hues.
Test new fonts and graphic elements with existing branding and ensure they complement each other. Small strategic updates help the brand creatively progress while retaining familiarity.
Preserve Your Brand Voice
Your website copy should retain the same brand voice even with fresh content. Brand voice includes:
- Tone – casual or formal, serious or humorous, warm or professional.
- Style – conversational, academic, descriptive, concise, inspirational, etc.
- Terminology – industry jargon, popular slang, or formal words.
- Perspective – first person plural, second person, third person.
- Message themes – inspirational, informative, aspirational, etc.
Analyze existing copy to codify your current brand voice. Then ensure writers produce new web content that matches your established voice. This consistency in messaging will smooth the transition for returning visitors.
Stick to Customer-Centric Design
One of the biggest benefits of a redesign is enhancing user experience. However, innovation shouldn’t come at the cost of user comfort and familiarity.
Brand recognition relies heavily on audiences interacting with touchpoints in consistent, intuitive ways. Drastically altering your website navigation tools or layout can backfire.
Instead, improve UX while maintaining expected functionality. For example, expand menus, but keep them in familiar places. Retain clear IA and site-wide consistency through the redesign.
Bridge Old to New
Don’t make the mistake of abruptly switching your live site to a completely redesigned one. This risks confusing visitors and diminishing brand recognition.
Gradually transition using bridges between the old and new experience:
- Drive traffic to a coming soon page previewing the new design.
- Implement design elements like fonts and colors before fully launching.
- Host a beta site to gather user feedback.
- Set up redirects from old URLs to related new pages.
- Announce changes and provide previews via email, social media, and on-site messaging.
With small steps, you can pique excitement while easing the adjustment.
Track Performance
Post-launch, closely monitor analytics for hiccups in traffic and engagement. Look for drop-offs that may indicate brand disconnect. Survey users to gather qualitative feedback as well.
Be prepared to quickly resolve issues stemming from the transition. With diligent tracking and troubleshooting, you can maintain brand recognition even after a major revamp.
A website redesign can be daunting, but partnering with experienced website redesign agencies makes the process seamless.
Redesign experts will handle the heavy lifting, from conducting brand audits to establishing style guides to bridging old and new sites.
