Ecommerce Branding Strategy Guide: 5 Ways To Brand Your Online Store

Did you know that the average customer won’t remember your brand until they have had at least 5 impressions with it? That’s why an online store especially needs a solid ecommerce branding strategy to connect with their customer base as often and effectively as possible.

UserLoop is committed to helping Shopify store owners understand their audiences so that they can better market their brand. Let’s look at what an ecommerce brand is, why online branding matters, and how to do it more effectively.

What is an ecommerce brand?

Your ecommerce brand is the vision you are sharing with the world. It's the story that you are telling and the voice you are telling it with. While ecommerce branding consists of things like fonts, color schemes, and logos, it is so much more than the sum of its parts.
Your online store branding is deeply rooted in the audience you are communicating with. To them, your brand is the collection of memories, experiences, emotions, and impressions that they associate with your business.

Why online store branding matters

Another way to think of your brand is like your company personality. If that personality meshes with your customers then you are going to develop a strong, mutually profitable relationship with them.

• Competitive Advantage. All other things being equal, customers will choose a brand they can relate to over one that they can’t. So if you and your competitors are selling essentially the same products, branding is what can draw more customers to you.
  
• Brand Loyalty. When purchasing a new product, 59% of consumers prefer to choose from a brand they already know. So if you have a loyal customer base who trusts you with one product, you can launch a related product with good odds of success.
  
• Increased Revenue. A survey of more than 200 companies found that you can boost revenue by as much as 23 percent by keeping your branding consistent on every platform you publish on. A strong product branding strategy, for example, ensures that customers get the same message whether they find you on Facebook, Instagram, your website, or a banner ad.
  

5 ecommerce branding strategies to help your online store stand out

#1. Define your audience

According to Bynder’s 2017 State of Branding Report, 70% of marketers hold that growing your audience is more valuable than making sales. But how can you grow your audience if you don’t know who they are?
That’s why the first step that any ecommerce brand strategist should take is to define who they are trying to attract with their branding. You can do this by asking yourself a few simple questions:

• What demographics do your ideal customers fall into?
  
• What does your audience want or need?
  
• What are their biggest pain points?
  
• Where and how do they communicate online?
  

Your answers will help you to make important decisions that impact your online branding. For example, if you learn that most of your customers prefer social media to email, you are going to focus on social engagement over growing email lists.

#2. Understand the brand story you need to tell

According to world renowned marketer Seth Godin, your brand story includes the “expectations and history and promises and social cues and emotions” that customers associate with your company. Elements like these, Godin explains, are what elevate logos, color schemes, and fonts into a true brand.
Story marketing is the act of actively shaping these experiences for your audience. To start planning your brand story, consider these three pieces of the puzzle:

• Mission. Beyond making a profit, what is your ecommerce store doing to change the world? Who are you serving and what benefit are you bringing to them?
  
• Vision. What does your future look like as a company? How do you foresee your mission taking shape in the next year? 5 years? 10 years?
  
• Values. What drives the decisions you make as a company? For example, a clothing retailer might value sustainable fashion. A toy company may value quality of craftsmanship.
  

#3. Find little ways to connect with your customers

Once you have your mission, vision, and values sketched out, you can begin to find ways to work your brand story into your content marketing. In fact, 80% of consumers find it helpful when unique content teaches them more about a company.
Here are a few examples of how to connect with your audiences in little ways that make a big impact on your ecommerce branding:

Brand your surveys

With UserLoop, you can customize surveys to help match your branding. A pet supply store, for example, might use cute cartoon dogs. And any brand that values light-hearted fun could use emojis.

Related: How To Create a Shopify Post Purchase Survey

Brand your tagline

After your store name, your tagline provides one of the first impressions for visitors of your company values. For example, Two Chimps Coffee greets visitors with a promise: “The best freshly roasted and ethically sourced coffee.”

If you are struggling with developing a good way to express your values succinctly, try Shopify’s free slogan generator and see if it helps spark your imagination.

Brand your email signature

Something as simple as adding brand elements to your email signatures goes a long way towards giving your audience more impressions of your brand. 
It’s standard to include your logo, company name, and contact info.

But you can also consider adding things like your tagline, mission statement, social links, and even a call-to-action button.

#4. Focus on benefits over features

A good story isn’t just a list of details. And a good product branding strategy isn’t just a list of features.

Your audience wants to know how your brand can solve their pain points—how it will benefit them. For example, rather than describing the children’s jeans you sell as using “high-quality seams”, you can say “they will hold up to the toughest play”.

Use the benefits over features principle wherever you can: product descriptions, blog titles, social posts, ads, and more.

#5. Serve your audience better, every single day
Remember that ecommerce branding is all about telling your story to your customers. It’s about shaping the memories, emotions, and experiences that they associate with your brand.

With a daily strategy in place to make sure you are always improving customer service, you can’t fail to build a stronger brand day by day.
UserLoop makes this process easier by helping you collect feedback at every stage of the online shopping experience. Whether they abandon their cart or place an order, receive their package or cancel the sale—we help you learn how they experienced your brand so that you can serve them even better next time.

Final Thoughts
It doesn’t take a professional ecommerce brand strategist to improve your store branding. By implementing these basic principles, and using the right tools, you can make big strides to gain the competitive advantage and increased revenue that come with a strong ecommerce brand.
Define your audience and start telling your brand story. And if you think UserLoop can help you tell it, find the best package for you today.