Usability vs Branding? - Usability is Branding
2nd June 2008
I've been in the following scenario several times. I'm in a meeting room with the web and marketing teams and there is a raging debate about brand guidelines. A proposed improvement to the design contravenes the guidelines.
One group think that branding is more important than usability. The other group think the opposite. They are both wrong. Usability is branding. It shapes people's opinions of your product or organisation.
What is a brand?
The brand is not a colour palette, it is not a typeface and it is not a selection of images. The brand is the way someone feels about your product or organisation.
Brand guidelines are very useful for projecting a consistent concept and tone. However brand guidelines are not the brand, they just help to give the brand some consistency.
The experience your customers have doing business with you has a greater impact on your brand than the subtleties of your brand guidelines.
An example
Imagine this. A new supermarket has opened up not far from your house. It's closer than the one you currently use. The adverts make it look like they have some lovely food for sale.
You go to the new supermarket and fill your trolley with all of the lovely food you saw on the adverts. You then go to the checkout.
When you get there, only one person is working the tills and there is a big queue. You spend 30 minutes queuing. When you try to pay, they tell you they do not take plastic. You've no cash so you leave without paying (and without your food). The next time the advert comes on, you put your foot through the television.
Regardless of the marketing efforts the company makes, they may never change your opinion of the brand. The experiences you have with the brand will do more to shape your opinion of it than the consistency of any visual stimuli you experienced.
Brand guidelines and the web
If we take this example on to the web, then suddenly brand guidelines can create the reason for these bad experiences. Only on the web can brand guidelines put obstacles in front of a store's checkout.
Some examples could include:
- Your palette might limit you to a hyperlink colour that nobody notices.
- The use of a heavy serif font might make your content impossible to read.
- Attempts to comply with the ‘tone of voice' might impede customers' quest for facts.
- Overly prescriptive rules for presenting the logo might make large demands on screen real estate.
It is improper to dismiss usability issues because of the constraints of branding guidelines. If the issue is significant, you should disobey the guidelines in as consistent a manner as possible. You should then seek to have the guidelines changed.
If they create usability issues on your website then the guidelines are not supporting your brand.
Preventing problems
This usability versus brand guidelines debate can be prevented by considering the web when the guidelines are created. The agency brief should include a list of detailed requirements to support your website.
For businesses that rely on it, the web should be the primary consideration when creating brand guidelines. This is where they can have the greatest impact.
The requirements of your brief could include:
- A hyperlink colour that stands out from the main corporate colour or two main colours that are not black, white or grey. Your hyperlinks will have more impact if they are able to stand out from the rest of the design.
- A useful secondary palette. It should have some colours with sufficient colour contrast against white that let you use them on the web. (see http://juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.php
) - A sans-serif typeface. If the main typeface is serif then a secondary one is required for web content. You can then use the serif font for headings and the sans-serif for large passages of text.
- A logo that is clear at low resolutions and does not have too many restrictions on its use. For example, insisting on vast areas of whitespace around it is wasteful on a website.
What can you do next?
- Read some more usability and accessibility articles.
- Find out how usability testing can help improve your brand.
- Attend one of our usability training courses and learn the tricks of the trade for yourself.
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This article was written by David Hamill. David is a User Experience Consultant at User Vision, a usability and accessibility consultancy that helps clients gain a competitive advantage through improved ease of use.
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