This is Adhesion's blog about online marketing, design, business, the web, culture, and more. View our work.

Start With Your Brand

Posted Tue, September 08, 2009 — by Paul Russell

Does your website pass the 3 second brand test?

The web is a unique medium. Users are either looking for information or are actively in the buying cycle. And because of the nature of the web, they expect quick answers! This means a website needs to communicate a business' brand and USP literally in seconds, or the visitor will simply click away.

The 3 Second Test

Here at Adhesion, we always apply The 3 Second Rule - does the web page I'm looking at clearly tell me what this business does, and why I should consider them in 3 seconds or less? Try it. Open your website's home pageand see if it does the job. What about the other pages on your site, do they pass the 3 second test? Check out the example above - very quickly you know who they are, what they do, and what you can expect.

Your Brand Online

If you're planning to build a new website, or refresh your existing one, start with your brand. Define your brand values first, then answer these questions: what colours communicate our values the best? Does our logo say who we are and what we do? Is our brand modern or conservative? Perhaps we need a tagline to make it clearer? What would our target audience respond to?

Most businesses simply transfer their offline branding to their websites, but what works on the printed page rarely works at 72dpi. The web has quite different requirements and your brand should be where your website design journey begins.