Have you noticed how the words “business” and “brand” seem to be used interchangeably nowadays? However, not all businesses are brands. In order to call yourself a business as well as a brand, you need to have an emotional connection with your target audience.
You have to be more than just a business to them. You need to become their caregiver, magician, or hero. This can be done by design. There are several brand archetypes that will breathe personality into your business. From business fonts to a multi-page website where your brand will live online, various elements need to make an individual impact, yet work seamlessly together. This becomes the challenge of branding design, which this article will explain is very much possible.
What is Brand Experience Design?
To understand brand experience design, you first need to take a step back and define brand experience. In short, the term refers to the emotions customers associate with a specific brand. These feelings are formed whenever customers engage with a brand.
Brand experience design then is the intentional creation and management of all these interactions—digital, physical, and interpersonal— brands have with their target audiences. It focuses on aligning these touchpoints with the brand’s identity so that there’s consistency.
From the actual product to the look and feel of its website to the tone of the customer support team, consumers should be able to distinguish the brand behind these interactions clearly.
Take Apple, the most valuable brand in 2024, as an example. Whether you’re learning more about their products via their website or physically exploring your iPhone’s capabilities, the experience is characterized by modern minimalism and intuitiveness.
Significance of Brand Experience Design in Modern Marketing
Consider the following statistic shared in Edelman’s special report exploring the collapse of the purchase funnel:
Aside from purchasing and using the product, 79% of consumers say that they directly interact with brands in other ways such as reading their content or connecting with them on social media.
This finding clearly illustrates why businesses need to create an experience that begins before checkout and continues after delivery. According to Edelman’s report, the primary driver for consumers’ desire to interact with brands continuously is because it gives them a chance to evaluate a brand beyond its product. As such, the actual product is only one of the touch points.
Then, there are the other obvious reasons like brand distinction, in particular from your close competitors. It’s about more than mere brand recognition, though. Branding applied consistently also keeps your brand top of mind among potential customers, while keeping you a favorite among current ones.
As effective design is all about creating consistency, it also takes the guessing out of shopping. Customers know what they can look forward to, making your brand the logical choice when they’re due for a replacement, upgrade, or a different product.
Let’s use the example of Apple again. Because of their superior brand experience design, when it’s time to get a new smartphone or replace a stolen one, users often get an iPhone again. If they’re in the market for another mobile device like a laptop, it’s a MacBook.
Aside from having a positive impact on sales, it also helps to streamline your marketing efforts. Unique experiences lead to word-of-mouth marketing, resulting in organic growth.
Key Components of Brand Experience Design
Brand experience design’s broad nature means it spans multiple disciplines and consists of several core components that include:
Digital and Physical Environment
The “places” where customers can interact with your brand are one of the key elements. These include your business website, social media pages, physical store location, and live events. While the layout or your website and store locations might have few similarities, visitors should still be able to tell that they’ve reached the right place.
Brand Identity
Brand identity itself comprises several key components that work together. These include:
- Business logo
- Font
- Color schemes
- Images
- Tone of voice
Brand Messaging
Brand experience goes further than brand identity and relies heavily on messaging. In the same breath, messaging is also more than the sum of the words. It leverages brand storytelling to share the mission and values of the brand in addition to product info and updates. Elements like the tone of voice and the channels via which brands wish to communicate also have an influence on the overall experience.
64% of consumers in their 20s and 30s believe that brands should make it easier to see their values when they’re about to make a purchase.
Customer Experience
While not visual in nature, the customer experience (CX) also shapes the overall brand experience. For example, SaaS business will look at onboarding and offboarding, while for eCommerce brands the shipping and returns process will form a key part. In fact, about 80% of US adults list customer support as a leading factor that keeps them loyal to a specific brand.
Then, there are strategies like personalization that basically all brands can incorporate into the experience, irrespective of their industry. Nearly half (47%) of consumers feel that developing a personal connection with them is extremely effective in building brand trust.
Functionality
Like with any good design, brand experience design also needs to combine aesthetics with usability. Cluttered displays, slow-loading websites, and unintuitive apps won’t create enjoyable experiences.
It also needs to be user-centered design so that you can fulfill your customers’ needs. For example, if they want round-the-clock support, you might need to consider including a chatbot in your website design.
Best Practices to Design a Brand Experience
Conduct a Brand Analysis and Develop a Strategy
Designing an exceptional experience begins with understanding the brand itself. It’s about delivering a cohesive, meaningful experience that resonates with target audiences and reflects the brand’s core identity. This is where brand analysis becomes a critical starting point.
Brand analysis is the process of evaluating your brand’s:
- Audience (and customer perception)
- Strengths and weaknesses
- Values
- Current position in the market
Your brand is only as strong as the relationship it has with its audience. To engage with them in a meaningful way, you need to do target audience research so that you can understand their needs, pain points, preferences, behavior, and current sentiment towards your brand. Surveys, focus groups, social media listening tools, Google Analytics, and CRM platforms will give you quantitative and qualitative data for drawing deeper and more balanced insights.
Your brand experience strategy should focus on how to improve the current brand perception so that it aligns with your business’s mission and vision.
While the focus is on your brand analysis, include a quick round of competitor and market analysis. You need an overview of the brand experiences that others are providing to ensure your memorable experiences are distinct.
Implement Consistent Visual and Verbal Brand Elements
Before you can implement your different elements consistently, you must create a customer journey map. This process identifies all the potential interactions that customers can have with your brand, starting at pre-purchase right through to post-checkout.
This exercise will ensure that there’s consistency and authenticity, but also identify areas where there is currently room for improvement.
This step will also involve more than merely the designing of visual assets. As these touch points are continuously updated, you need to train different departments on aspects like brand values, available products, and specs of individual products, for example.
Create Immersive and Memorable Brand Experiences
Modern consumers are not just buying products or services—they’re buying experiences. Brand experiences should go beyond mere customer engagement. Customers should become engrossed in simple activities like scrolling their social media feed or browsing their product catalog online. Your goal shouldn’t be to get one more impression for your social media post, but to leave a lasting impression on your customers.
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Guarantee Accessibility at Every Customer Interaction Point
As mentioned earlier, designing brand experiences is as much as it is about visuals as it is about functionality. Usability, though, is more than simply designing websites or apps that work. Consumers expect seamless, inclusive experiences at every touchpoint—both online and offline.
By prioritizing accessibility within design, businesses create inclusivity and expand their audience reach. Aside from customer loyalty, there’s also the issue of staying compliant with legal standards.
When designing physical spaces, look at your store layout and signage. For example, ensure aisles are wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs easily. Other ways that you can ease navigation is by implementing tactile or braille signs, for instance, and using clear, contrasting signage.
While a lot has been written about website navigation, it’s more than designing your site so that it’s easy to find the correct page. Your website should also meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This includes prioritizing features like screen reader compatibility, text resizing, and contrast adjustment options.
As for social media branding, this will include using text alternatives (alt text) for images and closed captions for videos.
Also keep in mind sensory sensitivity. Loud music, sudden sounds, and flashy fonts should be minimized, both in store as well as online.
Then, there’s the matter of your marketing. When designing your customer personas, guard against negative stereotypes. Your creative campaigns should be inclusive too. Not only should everyone be able to access your information, but they should feel like they’re allowed to access it and become part of your brand.
Measure and Analyze Customer Feedback Regularly
One of the major benefits of designing brand experience is that it can drive customer retention. To realize this benefit, you need to analyze customer feedback and use the actionable insights to refine your brand strategy continuously.
The truth is that the way customers perceive your brand isn’t always aligned with how you intend to present it. Without regular feedback, you risk operating in a vacuum, relying solely on internal assumptions about how your brand design resonates with its audience.
Like you’ve used surveys and focus groups at the beginning when you were busy with brand strategy development, you’ll use these tools and forums again to evaluate customer perceptions of elements like your brand values and tone. Product launches and major design changes can be especially good times to interview a few customers. Knowing how they feel about these updates can also inform your product branding strategy.
Not only do products evolve, but also customer needs and expectations. What works currently might not instill the same level of trust in branding elements like your logo. Collecting ongoing feedback keeps your efforts future-ready by uncovering gaps and opportunities you might not readily see.
Future Trends in Brand Experience Design
Hyper-personalization
Personalization in branding is only going to become a more pressing priority in the future. Generic personalization strategies like addressing customers by their first names will need to be supplemented with experiences tailored to their individual needs, preferences, and behavior in real time. Think product recommendations during the discovery phase to personalized post-sale services.
Interactive Storytelling
Like personalization, storytelling is also expected to evolve. It has always played a central role, but with advances in technology customers will expect interactive elements powered by virtual or augmented reality.
Sustainability and Ethical Design
Customers—especially Gen Z and Millennials—are increasingly prioritizing brands that incorporate sustainability, ethical design, and inclusivity into their practices. Sustainability doesn’t end with eco-friendly materials, though.
It extends to the digital realm as well, with brands adopting “green design” principles in their websites, apps, and overall digital presence. Energy-efficient web design, low-energy hosting platforms, and green certifications are becoming the new standards for forward-thinking brands.
63% of consumers list transparency about climate impact, supply chain, and employee diversity as extremely effective in building brand trust.
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Practical Examples of Designing Brand Experience That Works
Over 400 companies have used our brand identity design services to grow brand loyalty. For example, for YLOODRIVE, an all-in-one management solution for driving schools, we combined branding and UX/UI design services to create a brand design that communicated their promise of offering a solution that was simple, yet efficient.
They might know more than us about on-road driving, but our expertise creating on-brand digital components drove customer acquisition. Their monthly active users grew by 5,000. That said, it wasn’t just a matter of quantity over quality. We also managed to generate a user satisfaction rate of 90%.
For poke23, our brand strategy development services generated similar results. We were asked to create a brand identity that represented their values more accurately. Using striking visual branding, their multi-page website offered the same burst of energy as their food items. User satisfaction reached 89%, while brand recognition increased by 70%. What’s more, three months after launch, they received 50% more reviews from new users.
Unlock the Duck.Design’s Creative Approach to Building Strong Brand Identities
A well-designed product and customer demand aren’t enough to guarantee business success.
As a top-rated startup branding agency, the Duck.Design team knows that emotional branding closes the gap between initial interest into life-long brand advocates. While that takes time, to design a brand experience doesn’t necessarily need to be slow.
Our branding packages are one of the ways that we speed up brand experience marketing. You’ll receive new logo concepts, visual identity design, a style guide, illustrations, business cards, letterheads, and more to help you reach audiences across all key channels.
We like to think of ourselves as a one-stop shop for all your design needs. We boast a dedicated team of top, professional designers that grow with your needs and adapt to your feedback.
