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If you’ve been around the block a couple of times in the e-commerce arena, you’ll know better than most that your product suite isn’t where the work stops for an e-commerce seller. You need more than just something that solves your ideal client’s problem – you need them to take one look at it and know it’s for them.
And once they’ve looked at it and decided it’s for them, you need them to follow through the steps in your online store to actually make their purchase. The communication around making sure that’s easy and aligned with their needs is all about ensuring your business has solid branding, deployed throughout your store.
The Branding Devil Is in the Details
Branding for your e-commerce website is more than just your logo and the colors you use. According to career designers like Gabrielle Scarlett, branding for your e-commerce business includes anything that interacts with, or communicates with your customers, about what you do. For bigger businesses? It even includes internal communication with their teams, which help create company culture. In other words, it’s so, so much more than just whether you’re consistently using your logo materials.
The devil truly is in the details – the things that will push people away if you miss them? Or on the other hand, the details that will keep customers coming back again and again? They’re in the details too.
Think about the last thing that pushed you away from ordering something from a provider online. Not the one that was overpriced – the one that was too complicated. Or the one that you looked at and thought, “I don’t know whether I trust them.” That thought was a branding issue on the company’s part, because their branding’s job is ensuring you trust them from the start. If it doesn’t, they’ve got work to do.
Five Branding Consistency Customizations Your Woocommerce Store Needs
Luckily for those using WooCommerce, there are tons of ways to make branding consistency customizations via native tools, plugins, and integrations with systems like builder tools, to make your life easier, and keep your branding consistent. That way, you can proactively prevent situations where your customers head to a competitor due to uncertainty or mistrust in your site.
1 – Your Branded Color Palette
We’re going to start off basic, with something you probably already know. It might feel like a bit of a cop-out, but it’s so incredibly important to your whole online presence, you definitely can’t skip it. It’s your color palette. I know we essentially started off this conversation saying “hey, your branding is more than a logo and colors” but it does also admittedly include those colors and your logo. And you’ve got to have them EVERYWHERE.
Your shop page? Branded colors. Your product pages? Same deal. The cart? Gotta be branded. Keeping the default colors for your shop gives “this was thrown together, possibly by AI, over the weekend” instead of “this is a company I can rely on”. So replace the default WooCommerce blue, make sure the styling of your item pages makes sense for your overall brand, and get granular with your color management for things like emails and receipts.
2 – Intentional Product Images
Up next is another topic that might feel like it’s brand-adjacent, and not specifically part of your brand. But… sorry to burst your bubble, the images on your website are an integral part of your branding, and that goes times two for your product images.
Look, it’s the 2020s; we’re in an age where a guy with an AI tool and ten minutes can output product images for anything, without ever holding a product in their hand. And it shows, because there are LOADS of scam e-commerce sites popping up all over the internet, and you need to make sure that there’s not a single potential shadow of a thought in your customer’s mind, that goes, “huh, maybe they’re one of those scam sites”.
A huge part of that is making sure you’re using product imagery intentionally. That might mean using white backgrounds that highlight the products, sure. I’m not saying you’ve got to have professional brand images done of each of your items, taking on the investment that comes with a project like that. But what I am saying is your product images need to be intentional. They need to fit into your overarching branding and look the part. In an ideal world, those images themselves will be exactly what your ideal customers are looking for; they’ll bring customers to your business themselves!
3 – Branded (And Functional) Customer Emails
Like I said at the beginning, this branding consistency project isn’t just about what things look like; it’s also about making sure your people have the information they need, which shows they can trust you. One thing on that list is the email structures you’ve got built around your shop and registration process! So firstly, I don’t think you can argue with me about the fact that your emails have to actually work.
But that’s not as straightforward a project as it used to be, especially if you’re on the DIY boat! There are all kinds of solutions to deliverability problems with WordPress and WooCommerce now, so I won’t wax eloquent about your options or steps like dmarc & SPF. But suffice it to say, you’ve got to make sure your emails are delivering, and that might mean making some plugin additions to your stack!
Beyond working, your emails also have to make sense to your audience. Is there specific information that they’ll need in a receipt that another audience wouldn’t? Is your palette aligned to your branding? Do your cart-abandonment emails actually pull their own weight? What about tax details – do your customers need it? Make sure that the email receipts your site is sending make sense, and don’t prompt extra questions. If there’s a hole… patch it.
4 – Customer-focused Store Navigation
Finally, the last item on our consistent WooCommerce branding list is something very few people consider a part of their branding at all. Your e-commerce navigation. This one really gets into the nitty-gritty of “the devil in the details,” because it’s one of those quality-of-life items that changes the game, while helping communicate to your customers that you understand their needs.
We’ve all been to an online shop where the navigation made no sense, was clunky, or just straight up didn’t work. And that CANNOT be you if you want to lift branding barriers to customers making purchases on your website! So workshop your store navigation, look at the plugins out there to add custom breadcrumb setups, and ajax shop filters. Ensure your customers can quickly and easily get to what they need, using categories and filters that make sense for the way your shoppers will want to browse!
These Baseline Branding Consistency Tasks Will Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More!
Keeping your customers engaged and shopping isn’t all about making it easy to use your store – it’s about the details that build trust along the way, too. So consider adding these factors to your site’s structure and setup, if they’re not already on your priority list! Building customer trust is a brand activity – and it’s a worthwhile one, no matter what!
