Building web brands is different than building brands that don’t primarily live on the Web, according to Gerry McGovern. I took a look around the online branding articles at the Dey Alexander Consulting site mentioned in my April 14th Online Brand Experience post, and found Gerry McGovern’s Building Successful Brands on the Web. Take a look at the rest of his site, too, he’s got some interesting things to say.

McGovern contends that instead of focusing primarily on the visual aspects of the brand, as is often the case when building a brand with traditional marketing and advertising methods, successful web brands need to be built for function.

A web brand, like Google and Yahoo, exists primarily on the Web, isn’t seen anywhere else, and is concerned with helping people do things — that’s what they’re there for. Unlike offline brands, which can more effectively use the customary marketing elements of brand building, with promotion of mood, color, and feeling used consistently and repeatedly, a web brand is, first and foremost, functional.

In a global study conducted by Interbrand, the Google brand had the most impact on people’s lives in 2002. While we pretty much take what Google can do for us for granted today, it still impacts our lives tremendously. The Google brand works so well for us because it does a great job of helping us find what we’re looking for. It takes an anti-marketing, anti-advertising approach — it’s bare, minimal, and absolutely functional. It does what we want it to do, period.

Here’s how this plays out with web visitors: Web brands get stronger every time a reader succeeds in carrying out a task on the website, and the brand is diminished every time a reader is frustrated by a task on the website.

Offline brands can learn a lot from web brands in their web strategies, keeping in mind the impact that Google and Yahoo have had on the Web experience. People are used to instant gratification on the Web. They go to the Web for research, to find things, and very seldom are willing to wait through much superfluous chest pounding.

The very tools and approaches that make branding work offline are often drawbacks on the Web. Large compelling images take up space, can be slow to download, and frustrate impatient users in search of specifics. Catch phrases are of little use to someone who is looking for concrete information quickly.

Good web brands use accurate, well-written, and up-to-date content to build the brand. They use navigation, search processes, and ease of purchase to build the brand. And they don’t put anything in the way for their readers to trip over or slow them down while they’re there.

Well, this has given me some food for thought, how about you?

[tags]Gerry McGovern, online branding, brand experience, web brands, Google, Yahoo, offline brands, brand building, Interbrand, web experience, web function, web usability[/tags]

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