There are many different reasons that could lead you to the decision to rebrand your eCommerce store. Perhaps you have realized that your current brand is no longer relevant, or perhaps you have realized that you are not accurately pursuing or appealing to the right target audience. Getting your branding right is vital for success in eCommerce, it helps you to stay ahead of the competition by enabling you to establish valuable and long-lasting relationships with customers and generate more traffic to your site. Rebranding your eCommerce store can seem a very daunting prospect, but with the right know-how it will prove to be a hugely valuable investment.
Understanding Your Target Audience
As this web developer points out, many online businesses have had to reimagine their brand to meet 21st century eCommerce needs. In fact, the most common reason that businesses choose to rebrand is to increase their compatibility with their target audience. Therefore, to make sure that your rebrand is going to pay off, you need to have a very clear and developed understanding of who your target audience is. To do this, you should split the focus of your research both internally and externally. You should study the data of current customers to learn more about who your most-valued customers are – what their online shopping behaviors are, what demographic they are and more. You should also look at your competition to understand more about which types of target segments are interested in your eCommerce niche. Understanding your target market will inform everything from color choice to logo design, so it is vital that it is the first step of your redesign.
Define Your Brand Personality
Your brand personality may include between three to five distinct characteristics (e.g. empowering or caring). If you are struggling to define your brand personality, you should ask yourself some questions. How would you define your brand’s purpose? What is the benefit of your brand to its users? What do people think of your brand? What feelings should your brand provoke?
By answering these questions, you’ll be able to get a three-dimensional perspective of the personality of your brand, one you should use to inform all of your branding decisions.
Create a Rebranding Strategy
Rebranding is a process that involves many different departments and individuals working together for a common goal. To manage all of this, it is vital that you have a comprehensive rebranding strategy. In your rebranding strategy you need to include:
- A clear outline of your brand personality and mission statement
- Some research about your target audience, competition and markets
- An outline of your brand personality – with a visual representation
- An outline of the processes involved in branding
- A detailed timeline from the first day up to the launch of your new brand
- An outline of who is responsible for which parts of the rebrand
Having this strategy is vital to ensure all team members involved understand why the rebrand is happening, what the end goal is, what the rebrand entails and who to contact with specific questions. It also acts as a roadmap enabling you to track progress to ensure you are keeping up with the projected timeframe.
