What is Web Branding? - Introduction (Part 1 of 5)

This is the question many marketers ask us. As people have started agreeing to the power of internet and online branding in business success, they are getting more interested in knowing things to make informed decisions - good for them and better for quality service providers.

So here is a five parts series on Web Branding. We are trying to make it as exhaustive/intensive/interesting as possible. If you have any idea to make it better, please share with us on feedback@wrofit.com. Your inputs always help us making this blog more helpful to everyone.

What is Web Branding (E-branding)?
Web Branding is a holistic approach towards building Brand Equity on internet - which includes all computers, cell phones and other web compatible gadgets connected to the web.

Web Branding is a process necessarily comprising of four phases:

All the four phases are inevitable and create a loop which defines continuous activity for brand building on the web. Thus, by definition itself, Web Branding is an ongoing process like its offline counterpart.

Web design and development - website creation
Creating a website or web application which is professional, attractive, usable and engaging is at the heart of online success. Here all the italic adjectives are equally important - one without the others means website is only partially able.  Honestly, there is no magic wand to infuse these super genetics in a website. It can only be achieved through use of appropriate tools and technologies, design/development process and more importantly sea-deep insight into visitor psyche and online behavior.

This phase includes content development (text, images, audio, video and animation etc), layout creation, front-end coding, server side programming, testing and finally deployment on the web server.

Website promotion
To make your website popular on the web. This is the most significant phase of Web Branding because if visitors cannot reach your website, it is as good as your website doesn't exists. Website promotion is a major strategic decision for any business and calls for careful planning and adroit execution. Promotional strategy mainly depends on type of business, product, geographies to cover, target audience, time frame available, budget and other resources etc.

This phase includes search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, search marketing, banner ads, e-mail and newsletters, viral marketing etc. As a matter of fact, online promotion sphere is spinning so fast that it throws new opportunities and challenges everyday.

We can surely say that well crafted promotional strategy can do wonder to a brand.

Web performance measurement - web analytics
How your existing website is performing against the set parameter (KPIs) and how visitors are behaving on your website. Web performance measurement throws very useful insight into what part of our website is working as expected and where it needs improvement.

A software known as web analytics application collects visitors and related data on our website and present them in a format easy to make some conclusions with. Google Analytics is very sophisticated and popular free analytics applications available today. Adobe Omniture is a fees based enterprise analytics application.

Web Branding exercise is a complete waste of time, money and energy without effective web analytics process in place.

Website optimization
Website optimization is all about continuous enhancement in the website for better visitors’ experience and higher conversion. It is a technology assisted process to test different versions of a web page and their impact on visitors’ psyche. In addition, optimization also takes care of the website's technical efficiency like loading time, bandwidth usage, load on server etc.

While website analytics throws insight into what needs to be corrected on the website, website optimization helps you test different combination of web elements to decide which of them work the best.

Let us know what you are thinking of the article. You feedback is important for us. Moreover, we will  continuously update contents in this five parts series based on the inputs we receive from the readers - so keep visiting for new things (which will be marked appropriately to save your valuable time).