When is a website not a website?

When it’s your brand, of course.

Eh?

Let me explain myself.  I was lying in bed a couple of nights back trying to think about the content of a piece  I’m writing for the ever excellent B2B Marketing magazine about trends and developments in 2012.  By the end of my ruminations, I’d hit on upon an idea (I won’t spoil it by telling you what it is here) that was passable, and several that weren’t.  However, one idea stuck with me, and whilst not relevant to the article in question, it did warrant further consideration.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.“  Now, I’m not one to disparage our marketing cousins across the pond, but I think this sterile description leaves a lot to be desired.  It says nothing about the emotive aspects of a brand.  How a brand is a source of trust, reassurance, and stability.  Think I’m spouting marketing rhetoric?  Try telling Coca-Cola’s 36,318,559 (and counting)  Facebook fans that.  Brands are about relationships.  They’re about connecting to people, providing them with a fixed point to anchor their identities.  People trust successful brands, and this is the crux of my post.  Trust.

What makes a website successful?

Trust. 

Surely it’s not that simple?  Surely it’s about SEO, coding, meta tags, user journeys etc. etc.? Well yes, those all come into it, but what they all inevitably boil down to is trust.  What’s SEO if not Google’s attempt to separate trustworthy websites from untrustworthy ones?  And isn’t user experience all about building up levels of trust so that a user intuitively carries out a desired action. We speak about trust marks on a website – but really your whole website is a trust mark.  From the way it’s designed, to the user journey, even down to typography and semantics.  A successful website is built to build trust and create relationships with the user.  Sound familiar?  It should.

So, if both brands and websites are created to build trust and develop relationships with the end user/customer, why is there such a discrepancy between a customer’s website experience, and their brand experience?  Why do big brands spend millions on getting users to their websites, only to fail to convert them into customers due to poor checkout experiences? (see Econsultancy report. June 2011).  Should brands not be spending as much, if not more on their web usability and checkout experience than they do on fancy photo shoots and expensive rebranding campaigns? Treat your website as part of your brand strategy, and give it the same level of attention as the likes of ASOS, Amazon, and Ebay or you are literally throwing money away.

I’ll end my rant with a video from Google that aptly shows the disconnect between online and offline user experiences.  There’s some valuable (and amusing) lessons to take away here.  Trust me…