Rebranding is a natural progression for a lot of ecommerce stores. Times change and e-store vendors would do well to follow suit, especially if they are under-performing or failing to reach their target audience.
Of course, that’s not to say that rebrands should be taken lightly. A botched execution could do more to distance your loyal shoppers than attract new potential buyers.
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Below are a few things to consider as you revamp your online business.
Research, Research, Research
There is a common credo among carpenters that says, “measure twice, cut once.” The same principle can be applied to company rebranding. Take a moment to assess your business’ strengths and weaknesses, and develop a plan to remedy any flaws. After all, you don’t want to lose what is working for your favor.
Examine Your Competitors
One of the best things you can do ahead of a major rebrand is to examine your competitors. See where they succeed and where they fall short. Can you find a niche unfulfilled by other ecommerce sites? What techniques could you adopt to improve operations for your service?
Hire a Brand Consultant
While using in-house resources for research purposes is quick and cost-effective, you could be missing things because you’re too close to the project. Take advantage of an outsider’s perspective by hiring a brand consultant to guide your efforts and kibosh any missteps along the way.
Focus on Your Customers
Believe it or not, it is easy to forget that an ecommerce rebrand is not a self-interested passion project. Sure, you love your old logo and might be sad to see it go, but if it’s not serving your customers, it’s not helping your business.
The same can be said for excessive new feature implementations. It’s vital to give consumers what they need, not what you think they want.
Choose a Platform Provider
Building a new website from scratch is pricey and time-consuming, which is why many vendors prefer using pre-fab sites from platform providers. Shopify, for example, offers enterprise e-commerce hosting solutions that provide migration, scalability, support, and all the latest technologies to improve the online shopping experience for your customers.
Bold & Beautiful Design
Now for the fun part: redesigning your logo and website. Be sure to follow design principles to protect usability. Use plenty of white space, so your product images or sale notification have space to breathe. Keep commonly used buttons and features at the top of each page, including the search bar, contact page, ‘about us’ page and category tabs.
When developing a logo, remember to choose something that accentuates your brand personality. Make it dynamic and unique, something that can be used on social media or as a standalone, with accent colors or design features that can be used across your website.
Get Social
It might be a little unnerving to roll out a rebrand without alerting your most loyal customers. Instead, try drumming up excitement for your redesign on social media. You can even correspond to the coming changes with a product launch or clearance sale. Perhaps you could show some love by sending coupon codes to your longtime buyers.
Reset Expectations
Sometimes changing the look and feel of your store isn’t enough to boost sales on its own. You may also want to reimagine the way consumers interact with your site. For example, you could tweak your shipping options to give shoppers more choices. Or you could benefit from expanding your payment systems to start accepting PayPal or Bitcoin.
Let your customers know that your ecommerce rebrand is more than just a cosmetic change; it’s a top-to-bottom remodel that puts shoppers first!
Building a great brand takes some work and introspection, but if done correctly, yields fantastic results.
photo credit: Long Road Photography (formerly Aff) Computer – 068/365 – 9th March 2014 and Levi’s Hot Dogs via photopin (license)[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]