Online branding is easy to define. Create relations between company and stakeholder, be a rational and effective channel for the communication and sale, create values for the stakeholders through personalized products and services. It gets harder when the company has to connect its business strategy with the web organization and a website, which develops relations and communicates with all the stakeholders.

To come closer to get success with online branding, we have to take a look on what’s characterizing successful websites today. I’m going to use an example in this book to visualize the theory. It’s a quite successful website today, and I guess most of you know it. Facebook. Should I say more?
The question is why can it be so successful and how. I’ll define six criteria which have influence on how the user understands experiences and evaluates the company. The six criteria are linked together and have to be planned, coordinated and developed together.

Availability

One of the most important elements for successful online branding today is to be available. The Internet is big, and full of information. To be available is not just to have a good looking website with a lot of features. It’s also about having a relevant domain name. When users are looking for something the first thing they typically do is to write www.corporatename.com (or .co.uk, .ca, depending on the country). Coca cola has www.cocacola.com, and not www.colaisgreat.com, just as an example. Most of the users are also searching the web with search engines. So to be available is also to be visible and first in the search engines. Google and Yahoo is the most used search engines used and about 75 to 80 per cent of international users use google.com to find new websites. Being number one or in top three in search engines is very important to be available.  If you want traffic on your webpage, then you have to be visible in the search engines, and that is not easy. To be visible in search engines might be easy, but to be in top three is quite difficult. The company has to make a search engine strategy, and criteria as keywords, internal and external linkbuiding, content, description, structure and so on are all things that are crucial to the location on search engines.
Not just the domain and being visible in search engines are important to availability. It is also about accessibility. When users are arriving to the website, the access to information has to be easy. we can quickly agree on the server must be running, the website must be loaded quickly and the site must be visible in the web browser.

Structure

If a user visits your site without finding the information she’s searching for it can be catastrophic. She will properly never come back to the site and search for other sites. As the Danish usability-guru is writing in “Designing Web Usability, 1999”:

“A classic sign of mismanaged website is when the home page has a button for each of the senior vice presidents in the company. Remember, you don’t design for your VPs; you design for the users. Therefore, it will be quite common that you can’t tell VPs where “their” buttons is on the home page.”

The navigation need to help users answer three questions:

• Where am I?
• Where can I go?
• Where have I been?

The structure of the website is very important for the users to find information. The website must not have more than three layers. The navigation has to be easy and transparent and also a search function and a sitemap where the user can provide an overview and search for information on the website.

Personalization

To understand what personalization is and can be, I will use the four ways of personalization by Peter Svarre, 2003. Peter Svarre descipes himself on his blog in these words:
“Veiled in a cloud of buzzwords and hype, digital communications has changed rapidly in the past 3 years. Web 2.0, social networking, communities and viral marketing are just some of the words that have been plastered all over this change. This blog seeks to get behind the buzz and provide practical and theoretical insights about digital communications from my work as User Experience Director at Hello Group.”

The four ways of personalization are:

1. Interactive elements
2. Customization
3. Rule-based personalization
4. Collaborative filtering

Personalization is about creating relations and experience that improves and qualifies the contact between the stakeholder and the company by online communication.

Interactive elements

Interactive elements are the simplest way of personalization. It makes static information dynamic and alive. Interactive elements can be calculating functions, calendars, dynamic maps, chatting and forums, sound and video sequences and interactive games. All these elements increase the value of the visit and makes return on investments (ROI) interesting and relevant for the user. Bank websites are typically examples of using interactive elements. It could be offer a credit card, calculate currency, pay bills, invest in shares and so on.

Customization

Customization is typical tick-in-a-box personalization, where the user can make her own personal website by selecting her preferences. A good example to illustrate that is the iGoogle. You have a personal Google page where you decide what will be showed – the weather, financial news, RSS from a blog ect. Also Yahoo (my.yahoo.com), MSN (my.msn.com) and Lycos (my.lycos.com) has these my-page concepts.

Rule-based personalization

Rule-based personalization is when the website is designed to form after the behavior of the user. How? When you go to a corporate website and have two opportunities: Private or Business. If you choose private, the website will remember your choice and the next time you go to the website, you will automatically be directed to the section for privates.
This way to personalize can be confusing with users with wide interests and requires an active user, filling out questionnaires.

Collaborative filtering

Collaborative filtering is a very strong and effective way to personalize. The website automatically learns the users preferences as the user navigates, reads, buy stuff, uses functions ect.
This type of personalization is used by amazon.com, and requires lots of users, products or pages. The user doesn’t need to fill out any forms. Just by clicking in to the website, all her actions are being registered and saved to generate rules.

“Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” is a good example of collaborative fitering.

Choose strategy

When a website has to be personalized all the parts in the production of the website has to be involved. It’s important that all of them knows the different ways to personalize, and knows the consequences of them. A discussion of that is necessary and so is a discussion of the necessity of the personalization.

Language style and tone

The language is a very important but often overseen part of both online branding and creating and updating content on the website. There’s a difference between writing technical articles, sales information, augmenting or being humoristic or funny. The language has to fit the situation. There are a few rules that are good to follow:

• Don’t use too many technical words.
• Write short. Internet texts are read 25% slower than paper texts.
• Help the reader to make an overview fast and easy.
• Use words and sentences that the user knows.
• Write correct and directly.
• Write objective. Make sure that your research is okay.
• Don’t write too many slogans ect. If it’s for advertising, present some data, tests, graphs and reviews for users.

When writing for the internet you also has to write to the segment you are writing to. Write in words that your segment understands and uses.

Identity and integration

When building up a new website, the identity and integration are very important. There has to be synergy between external, internet, offline and online communication to build- and keep up a brand. If folders and posters signal professionalism, sharpness and strength you don’t want the website to signal some other values. In TV commercials L’ORÉAL is “because you’re worth it”, on the website it is, on their posters it is and so on. L’ORÉAL is “because you’re worth it”. The internal, external, offline and online communications has to be coordinated all over. That can be quite hard to do, when traditions, culture and leaders often blocks for that.

The Graphic aesthetic expression

The last factor for successful online branding is the graphic aesthetic expression. It is the visual design and graphic interface which can both be the functions and the aesthetics like proportions, colors, width, lightness, text, fonts, forms, balance. The graphic interface is the first time impression that the user gets. If it doesn’t hit the user, she might be clicking to the next website. To illustrate the effects of the graphic aesthetic expression I’ll show an example. The example is the well known Facebook. So what’s about Facebook? It isn’t that much. No harder graphics, just simple blue. It could look like a bank website.

And that’s exactly what they want, simple. No ads on the front page. A web usability dream, with big explaining buttons, not much text but enough to make it understandable. And first of all it is serious by its signals. It could look like a bank website. Danske Bank (Bank of Denmark) has this “Facebook look” to. Or is it Facebook that has “bankers look”?