I ran across my notes on a branding presentation given by Jared Spool at the Silicon Valley Web Guild some years ago. I found the PDF notes for the presentation still on the Web Guild website. The title of the talk was Strike Up The Brand – How to Design For Branding. If you haven’t seen Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering (UIE) talk, I’d highly recommend it. He’s very entertaining and informative. I vaguely remember him standing up at the podium with several rolls of toilet paper. But it was funny. And informative. Not like Carrot Top. Anyway, here are my typed notes from the presentation:

Branding is:
1. Accumulative
2. A conditioning process
3. Associate symbols, colors and phrases with certain emotions

Affinity Branding
1. Placing logo near objects.
2. Establishing close relationship between the branding element and product.

Example: You see some jeans in the store with the Calvin Klein label on them. You may have been conditioned to associate Calvin Klein with quality or fashion, so you may see the jeans in front of you has having those characteristics because of their association with the logo.

Dispositional Branding
1. Not placing logo near objects
2. Do what you are predisposed for
3. No clues available – there is nothing in front of you to help make the choice
4. Depends on situation

Example: If someone were to ask you what service you would use to ship a package across the country and have it get there the next morning, you would probably say FedEx. You have the disposition or tendency to associate the service with their brand, without being given presented with a choice between FedEx or DHL, for instance. However, you may have chosen DHL.

Indirect Messaging
1. Using slogans and images to condition the customer to the brand
2. Must be repetitive
3. Takes time
4. Easy to Design

Direct Experience
1. Using actual experience to condition
2. More effective
3. Harder to design

The Ford Website given as an example of Indirect messaging. Commercials on the Website interrupt and are unpleasant. Their Website had many logos everywhere, but didn’t help navigation. They were just distracting.

Best thing you can do in branding a site is to give a good experience, i.e. allow user to complete task (good direct experience). Logos and advertisements can work against you.

Associate the brand with good experience on your Website.

Usability

The experience dominates the user’s visit. There is NO evidence to support that fast loading sites are easier to use. The opposite may be true.

How slow is too slow?

Perceptions of users on speed of download is uniform and consistent (given different tasks they chose themselves).
1. No correlation between download time and perception of download time.
2. There is correlation between perceived download time and completio of task.
3. Zeigarnik effect – The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. If you don’t let the user complete the task they visited your Website for, they will remember that as a negative and associate it with your brand.

Other correlations:
· Fun
· Professional
· Whether or not they would return

Task completion is paramount!

Seducible moments

After the user completes a task they are more susceptible to being marketed. Also, you can offer alternative product selections.

A search engine on a Website is not good for sales. More purchases come after clicking on categories than after using a search engine. If they need to use the search engine, your navigation is too hard. Fix it.