“Experiencing the Web!"

Consumers talk of great experiences on the web. How do you provide that?

Branding in the online world is far more than just transferring your off-line brand identity to the Web. While it includes a graphic design and an image, your brand in the e-world is more affected by the interactive experience you provide to your users. The onslaught of netvertising is to be noticed. It can only help create awareness, but not build brand equity.

Many of the ad spends are huge misallocations, yielding eyeballs and not die-hard enthusiasts, aiming at tourists not supporters. Building and sustaining a compelling customer experience online is most challenging. Although a company may have more direct control over a customer’s online than off-line experience, there are still hurdles on the Internet that offer more opportunities to destroy a brand image than build it.

Customers go online for a hassle-free experience and to save time. So any bump in the road, slow response times, poor navigation, unresponsive customer service, all pave the way to weaken the brand. Hotmail is a well-known online brand thanks to advertising and word-of-mouth, but then when surfers log onto the site, they often have to wait for hours to check their mail.

These are the serious consequences of not being able to deliver on the brand promise. The surfer just leaves your site with the possible intention of never returning. That is why successful Internet brand builders such as AOL, Yahoo! and Amazon.com have followed what is called “the delayed trigger” brand pattern, whereby before building broad-based awareness they design an experience relevant to their customers and remove all the bugs.

Developing a Core Brand Platform

Brand management is moving from being 'pure image' to being r'eputation based on facts'. The game plan now becomes understanding the components of the brand's core assets and selecting what should be communicated on the web. This means taking the time to identify what those core assets are and then designing a branding campaign based on an optimal allocated budget.

A brand on the web requires a core focus and a set of strategic underpinnings to grow and succeed.

Core Brand Strategy on the Web
The web is a strange and exciting place for a brand. How much can a brand communicate on the web! It can actually convey the reason for its identity and what it can do for the consumer. The web conveys the brand voice.
Ogilvypr.com has listed the benefits of being associated with them.

Designing and Reinforcing the Brand Experience Online

The Bond of Trust
When a customer logs onto your site, he/she should be made to feel secure and safe by basic elements like - the look and feel of the site, the voice, and the ability of the site to provide customers what they are looking for The experience should be absolutely relevant to the customers’ needs.

Google does that very well by pinning down the exact search results.

Get them back!
The experience provided should be so impressionable and satisfying, that the surfers should keep coming back for more. Loyalty does not come through with flashy designs or extravagant promises like “Earn free e-rupees on the web” or “Get two dollars for every mail you send or receive”. It evolves by consistent positive experiences on the web. Each experience to your customers must be seen as value-added and reassuring.

Building brand loyalty is not simply a matter of customer satisfaction. That’s the starting point. With the Internet, information about competitors is just a click away, and switching becomes much easier. Many "satisfied" customers move right onto the next provider. Brand loyalty comes from meeting and shaping customer expectations through experience over time.You always deliver top quality services. You can be counted on. You anticipate their needs.

Experiences make way for more promises
When your brand meets the customers’ needs online, their expectations increase. The more the brand attends and reaches out, the stronger it becomes a defence against competition.

See the site as your consumer would
Maintaining a positive brand experience means understanding the customers’ viewpoint. It means managing the consumers’ experience, knowing what they want and how. That’s the reason why many sites have feedback and response columns at the end of their site. Meeting the needs of different target audiences help the brand to attract consumers of diverse needs.

Yahoo! for instance, has started WebPages particularly for different countries and the states within them to address a broad audience. The company's approach to building its brand includes delivering a My Yahoo! site that allows the customer to personalise the Internet experience in return for providing basic information such as industry, occupation, and pin code. An option section requests site visitors to indicate a choice that enables Yahoo! to customise the kind of news, Web sites, and information displayed on that individual's pages. The result: The customer gets information anticipated, relevant, and personal. In the process, the customer moves along the relationship-building continuum.

Only a few decades ago, the owner of a general store knew his customers so intimately he could suggest specific products to meet their unique needs. Then it was more a sellers' market. Though relationships were created, the onus was on the consumer to build on it to get some service. Now, marketers have the opportunity to make that same personalised connection. Companies that grasp the power of the Internet and its relationship-building capability will discover an accelerated path to prosperity online!!

Related Reading:
"Digital Branding" (1236)
James R. Gregory
Published for BusinessWeek, August 2000.