The Power of Brand Design: It's Key Role of Brand Design in Website Success with Cara Bendon
In this interview with the incredible Cara Bendon, a branding specialist with over 14 years of experience we talked all about why branding matters and how to use it to your advantage.
With a track record of helping over 60 brands create a lasting impression, Cara is passionate about empowering ambitious sustainable brands to make a significant impact. In this livestream, she shared invaluable insights and techniques that entrepreneurs and small businesses can use to establish themselves, drawing from her extensive expertise in the field.
Transcript below!
👉 You can connect with Cara here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carabendon/
Get Cara's free training — 3 Ways to Make Customers LOVE Your Brand
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Welcome so much Kara um over to be my second guest for this series for the unlocking website success series um today we're going to be talking about branding which is a huge piece of the puzzle of websites we're talking about so many different pieces throughout the series but I think that branding is one of those just really really critical ones but I think that branding is one of those just really really crittery ones but sorry I don't know can you hear a feedback loop iPad all right um do you have two tabs open still
hello okay sorry for those of you who are here live with us hopefully um I she's gonna rejoin in a second and I can't hear the feedback boot on my end so I'm gonna hope it's a problem with Cara.
But Cara is a branding expert if you follow her her brand is so joyous it's so friendly it's so professional it's so um intriguing and it's very very clear and consistent about who she is what she does how who she helps how she helps.
Her work you know if you look at her portfolio if you look at the clients that she's had they're also just really really you can just see the quality of her work you can see the expertise behind what she does.
I'm gonna add her back right now… hello welcome back hi sorry about that no worries I've just been doing a bit of a intro for you while we've been talking um from my perspective of things I'd love for you to do one of yourself as well but just of what I see about your work being really um approachable but also really obviously professional very no like knowing once I used a word before that has gone out of my head but just very you have obviously are quite expert in what you do but you very I don't know it's just a lot friendlier and a lot more warm than I think some some people um and what I love right now is that you're doing a whole series also on values behind branding which is just something that is so I've got a whole I want to do a whole video of the series about values in your website and bringing those to the Forefront.
Anywho I would love to for the audience for the uh to hear a little bit about who you are your story how you got here what it is you do who you help that kind of uh bio type thing right and well first of all thank you for saying that it's really lovely because that's very much one of my missions is to take branding which can sometimes be seen as a bit of a layered thing a difficult thing a thing to crack.
A mystery and to really demystify it and make it simple um so a short uh version of the story is basically my background is working in ad agencies for Brands like um The Times newspaper um super nanny um I had some hotel chains um as well um so but basically um very early on in my career I kind of realized that that wasn't doing it for me I got massive burnout and I realized that I wanted to yeah basically I had been part of a marketing digital marketing team in general .
Then I realized I was actually in the swimming pool one day and it came to me that my the area that I was most interested in is people's relationship with Brands and because I think that it's a lot to do with trust it's a lot to do with psychology I think it can be passed on um you know my dad would that was a brand cynic he would go for the own brand cheapest of everything and yet he would always buy me a Denman hairbrush he would always go for Listerine and out of the wash there were certain brands that for him spoke to him and I found it interesting to unpick what it was about.
You know the stories that he related to and then other people as well and I thought there's just such a good way to help people setting up their businesses simplify this because basically yes it's all smoke and mirrors but I've seen behind the curtain of the smoke and mirrors and I know exactly the components you need um and basically putting out an image there of the brands you want to be is just I'm not going to give it an exact sort of um fraction but let's say it's two-thirds of the way of getting there you know it's like in terms of mindset and approach but also attracting those people so I think that for small businesses and individuals and solo entrepreneurs it's really important because it's about being able to portray you know yourself in a certain way to then make that reality that's going from sort of a side hustle into it being full-time thing or you know scaling up
I muted myself so I could drink my cup of coffee without oh no and then forgot without like interrupting you and like swallowing noises and so here I am I was just saying that um I know from my own experience um with my small business like I have a fairly good eye for design I ended up being a website designer now before that even um I was look so I have a decent knife for design but so I decided what I thought would be like this brand that I would love and I spend all this time and energy building a brand and then I like within a year I hated it it just felt so not me it felt so I don't know like everyone else was doing it um it just felt so kind of cookie cutter and also like it was very much a and I had nothing against these.
I'm just gonna say this first but it was very much like a teal gold and gray brand and there are a lot of teal golden gray Brands out there and it just felt so like I don't know and so instead of leveling up that brand when I decided to pay someone to do my brand for me I was like I wear burgundy every single day like I've been wearing burgundy every single day since before I put it it was my wedding color like I'm obsessive without burgundy we're going with burgundy and so that has now stood you know it for another four years of my business I haven't felt the need to change it it's not just because I went burgundy and it's a natural part of me but because the brand was designed professionally to be timeless it's not trendy really it's and it's very very me because it was designed by a very good friend so I think that it not being trendy point is so key because I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls really is sort of jumping on a bandwagon of styles and that is the immediate way to not stand out if you think about it won't be authentic like you said I mean for a personal brand it's it's slightly different from if it was more of a B2B or business brand or b2c brand but when it's a personal brand it is personal.
You've got to like it it's got to reflect you and if you naturally you're always wearing your brand color as well then that gives you greater you know brand awareness like it's almost like you're doing a job of being you know presenting your brand obviously it's a color you love but um you know but it I think yeah there's some you know there's a lot of logic in that like so for me my blue in my brand I have quite a colorful brand actually I love it because actually my brand I have noticed parallels between my brand and my personality and also my my personal style and I've noticed and even interior taste and I've noticed more of an overlap over the last few years um and because I have because I work in a visual field I feel like I'm spoiled for design and I sometimes don't feel like I know my taste because I like so many things.
But yeah I've noticed that they're very much sort of having a sort of light bright background with pops of color is very me in almost all parts of my life but yeah that blue was funny because um I was talked out my first brand um and for perfectly good reasons it's a nightmare print it's just not possible to print that blue that vibrant that cobalt blue so my brand blue for anybody who um doesn't know my Brands it's like an electric blue for me it speaks to me um it you know blue is traditionally what's apparently the nation's favorite color I think in the US as well I think it's basically the world's favorite color it's considered trustworthy etc etc that's not why I wanted blue my blue is is um energizing and exciting and it is it's very bright it's not like I was start actually having this conversation earlier over lunch with my friends and about her every time I designed sort of somebody in a professional services website if they don't have a brand of their own they kind of are like like I built a website for somebody in who is essentially doing accountancy matching book matching bookkeepers and I was like oh so how does like a really nice green sound and she's like no blue okay Professional Services love blue like they love that trustworthy blue color but you're blue you're right it is not like the traditional kind of Navy or kind of gray blue it is a really bright electric energizing fun blue yeah I'm my exercise rebranded in 2021 and actually that was much more about bringing the fun into my Brands actually before that it was a little bit more I don't know sensible and professional and I think
So that's something I very much believe is that um you know there's no sort of set way of doing things um you know I balance that playful part of my brand with obviously knowing my stuff and then that's the professionalism so um but yeah in terms of um you know uh websites all looking the same as well or brand colors it's like if your website is your storefront it is one of the biggest parts of your brand but also your website is going to evolve and evolve over the time you run your business even in the like two years you have one website with three years you have one website you're gonna just keep updating blog posts and changing the home page and just keeping things fresh.
Well you know that's at least the intention sometimes hard to do then to say but um but then over the course of a career that might be 10 or 15 years or longer it might be your lifetime then you're going to have multiple editions of that website because things really change you know a website in 2010 which looks very strange today Mobile use behaviors Everything Changes um and new technologies come on board so um but basically when you have a brand that's separate from that you that's it you have a brand because when you only have a website that's carrying your brand then I've even been past sometimes as a starting point a local which is a screen grab from their website because they don't even own the file um or you know and it's not even sometimes it hasn't been designed.
Sometimes it's literally just the typed out sites title in front of the template and you know I'm not judging people who need to do that as a first step to get their business out there test their concept gain their confidence getting the first few clients absolutely but if you carry on with that you're gonna very quickly realize the limitations of that you can't take out an ad and use your logo you can't do social media templates without having you know it's it you need to be able to have a brand and then bring that to your website to be embodied in your website because your brand is yeah gonna see you through basically yeah absolutely.
Like I firmly believe that there's in your first six months probably of business at least you probably don't need a professionally designed much of anything because you're still finding yourself once you've done that bit you've found yourself that's when you need a proper brand you need a proper logo you need a proper website and those types of things to really then stand out and to make waves and whatever it is you do or whatever it is that you're offering.
Like I was telling you this I have a lot of clients I have clients with established brands um but they don't really know how to use them so maybe somebody's done it for them and then they are not graphically or design um Savvy enough to really know what to do with that so I've had clients that have said to me like I see your social media posts and before I know like before I read it I know it's yours there's no logo on it like I but I still know it's yours and I say how do you do that I said it's because I use the same exact colors and fonts in everything I do right I wear burgundy all the time obviously I wore it all time before it was my brand color but now I wear it even more I wear it intentionally for video calls I was at the House of Lords yesterday I wore it very intentionally because I knew they were going to be professional photos there and that it would be a brand moment as well as a so that's a little on the extreme side to dress in your brain colors always but I'm blue for um all my online workshops and a lot of things like that but I don't as much now because.
Because I kind of let that relax a little but you know honestly it was a very effective tool people send me things that are bright blue and if that hasn't registered on a subliminal level with people if that hasn't connected with people what your brand is then I don't know what will so you know in fact one of my absolute top things is is color and using it to your advantage I mean and it you know it works for you and much as you it makes your you know it makes sense for you and um and you you know you love it and it carries through things you know it's a busy old world out there and we see a lot of different media a lot of different images text download this read this too you know there's a lot going on and um the brain reads color faster than it reads like words or anything else so your your brain will connect something from the color alone like to begin so that's why you know supermarkets have a lot of knockoff brands that you know very cheekily use very similar colors on their packing shapes because our brain takes in those colors and shapes before anything else so um as a small business why wouldn't you use that little brain trick to your advantage.
So what I always do is I look um at all of my clients competitors and do a visual analysis um and I'll I'll do it you know um based on as well their brand values they say your bookkeeping um your person you know if they wanted to be a bit more disruptive in that world and they were like oh I'm going to be the you know the the you know the the down to earth bookkeeping person or I'm going to be the bookkeeping person for really busy Millennials rather than sort of a more traditional way of marketing it then.
Then we would look at those values and we would look at what's out there and we'd say okay there's mostly stuffy traditional with a corporate Vibe it's mostly these colors being used and then we'd go completely to the opposite you know uh we look at our audience avatars and that's that's the key part of what I do is think about the audience and what you know um they what do they know like and Trust to kind of gauge things but then we would inform you know um I I worked with a data consultancy and had purple as their brand color she was a woman uh female owned data agency in a very male-dominated world that's all very well however purple is so close to Blue that blue and purple were getting used a lot in that industry um blue purple um blue to gray blue to green and gradients so I was like right we need to go for a solid color and I pitched her um I think red yellow and orange I was like just to go the opposite way um I was like for maximum visibility this isn't for everybody.
But for maximum visibility so that's when somebody sees your brand they know it's you and it's they land on your website and there's no confusion whether they've gone to the wrong one like when you're when you're comparing things like if you're comparing insurance or whatever and you're looking at a few different websites it can be easy to forget which ones you've already looked at when they're very similar so actually when yours is more different it makes such a big splash exactly and I think that's part of my like love of the burgundy thing too and obviously it happened in a natural way but there aren't very many burgundy Brands out there um they're very especially that are women-owned Brands like just doesn't really happen it is sort of a naturally masculiney type color which is fine that's sort of me anyway in a lot of ways
But I think it's just because it's this I think it's gonna be trustworthy like according with those sort of very traditional corporate colors maybe because it's like the deeper colors um often associated with sort of establishment and Trust yeah exactly and I love what you were saying about creating a lot of playfulness and stuff and Brands um in my personal business obviously because I have this almost corporate deep deep trustworthy color um I've gone by using and one of my two fonts is really playful um I have taken in my most recent website design redesign have layered some photos have added some really fun um I had some custom illustrations done um I've got little sections where I've added almost like not subtext but like pop like like on my like quote text almost the things you'd see in parentheses right so I've got on my website where I have my headline and then it says we never look back we you'll never look back we promise right but that's not like the main point it's just they might glance across it and they give that personality Pop um and little things like that so you're just having I've had to yo sorry your website definitely pops of Personality.
It's very warm you know um warm friendly and yeah and it's interesting because actually that goes to show how much of um brand isn't just logo because it's actually very minimal and clean um so yeah it's just one part of the of the whole pie exactly so let's talk about that what are some of the other parts of the pie that somebody should think about when they're doing um when they're preparing to have a website designed okay brand wise obviously well it's interesting you say that because I actually have got um this that I worked with um I collaborated with a um a graphic designer and a copywriter a couple of years ago on a really robust chart now I don't want anyone to get scared by this because it's really quite a lot but it just goes to show that how much is in a brand so can you see if I can show you this oh my gosh but yeah but it's beautiful and I think the other thing is yes before anyone gets totally freaked out when I had my brand designed some of these things have evolved more naturally from that brand design like I've learned how to use them and I've learned how to probably build some of those other pieces and obviously when you work with the professionals they're going to make sure you have those pieces as well.
Totally totally now that was just us nerding out trying to put it all down into a beautiful infographic um to work out all the different parts of Brown Foundation brand identity tone of voice brand personality there's a lot in there but um yeah I think the most important things are I think what you said about somebody not needing something before the six month point because they don't know what they're about yet is really key because I think that knowing what you're about knowing your USP and your audience and your competitors um and you know and basically how you might want to stand out those are the bits of information that you would need to take somebody like me to work on your branding before um a website because if you work from that basis of knowing who you are knowing your the landscape and knowing who you want as your customer then we can make really confident decisions together um and once basically the The Branding process is very collaborative but at the end of it you should you know get a really good toolkit that you can then use on a website
I wouldn't go too early into the visual element I think um as you say trusting a professional sometimes to um guide on those things is useful but knowing your your Brand's personality knowing exactly sort of what Sweet Spot between like um informal and more formal you might want it to be I think what you're saying about about visual touches on website is so true because there's um it's not just copy that can have like different tone it's as you say the actual design of elements and even the the way things can animate in or load in or like the section endings they you know where they're straight or curvy or Wiggly you know all of those things get very different Vibes.
So I think having a confident sense of the direction and positioning you want your brand to be um is really really key yeah absolutely I've had a few clients in the past that by the way absolutely lovely but they come to me with this idea of I love this website but here are my colors my brand the things that I want to do I want it to be this.
But I want it to pop a little bit in every single time I just like I should give them the first draft and they're like I hate it yeah and it's because they think they know what they want um but what they really want is so a lot of times they're like I want this little pop of color or I have this font that I really like and then I show it to them they go no that's a bit much isn't it and it's not it just feels busy to them or loud or off off for them and usually this these are people in the wellness industry and um for one reason or another and so I think how do you help how would what advice would you give to somebody if they were coming in to um that kind of you know they're getting ready to talk to a designer whether it be web or professional brand designer like yourself to help them get really clear on those types of things.
Like how to get really clear on I want a brand that looks and feels and functions in this way gosh okay there's a lot in that my brain's buzzing there's loads of fruits you can go and one is it's always helpful to have an idea of what you like and I'm very much somebody the screen grabs and bookmarks and saves all the things I like as well.
Pinterest boards are not brand mood boards because they're too varied um and just because you like something in somebody else's logo what's the most useful thing is working out what it is you like about it or why you like it um so I think if you see something um you know it you might see somebody with a big bubble font um 3D logo that's lilac and pink and it's all very playful and very kind of um Y2K and maybe you look at it and it's not really your brand but you like it and why you like it is because it works for that person's brand because they know who they are and their confidence so what you're actually looking for is your own confidence and your own route but if you send that reference to a designer you're going to end up with lots of styles that look like that so that's why I always work through the process of looking at your audience I Write a brief and then the brief um also we sort of work out you know the level so how are we pitching this you know.
And it's like oh okay so yours is you know professional but with lots of friendly warm tips you know or whatever what's that angle you know um I think the other thing to bear in mind is um that I think it is good to a prick to see what you like into collect references but also not to get too overwhelmed because it's like I was saying to you at the start this you know I I don't even know what I would you know what my interior design style would be because I like so many things if I put them all in one house it would probably be mental you know so and and that's just natural it's it's natural for us to have varied and Broad things that we like and that's okay and what we like can change as well so that's why it's about working out more Timeless things and you know what's at the base try and look at what there is in common with the things that you like you know are they all a bit more soft and Bohemian and natural are they all really bold and Punchy um you know what is it that you like about these things they're really clean simple shapes they're clever you know.
I think yeah I think that's a really helpful place but you know a good brand designer or a brand agency they will guide you through the process so um but I think yeah just um just realizing that it it's you know not basically getting that email from them with the drafts and then immediately putting up Instagram to see if that's what the kind of thing you're seeing on there and if that tallies with your mood board because you you'll collect more and more references all the time and it's about making sure that you you know if if you've told the the person you're working with your your brand USP your exact audience and how you want to be perceived in the market how you want to come across then trust them that they have taken that in in Minds yeah absolutely I think that's a really good point um like I have a similar in my brand like I don't do branding but in my process of working with me one of the questions I ask is please give me a minimum of three examples of websites you like and why so that I can start getting into their head of form function design aesthetic those kinds of things ask lots of questions as well around those types of things but it is it is so important I had another it's really good because um yeah saying why you like them because that's the other thing we're talking about subjective things here and one person's clean and uncluttered there's another person's like Stark and unfinished um so yeah absolutely I think one of the other things that I wanted to say was um like it's so funny you mentioned the like yes we can like so many things I had a client website I started last week and she's she won't mind me saying um but she came to me I I do not like with I think 12 different colors she wanted on her website and I was like no
It's not how we're gonna do this because I won't create the output that you want like it's going to be too busy too much going on and I think a lot of times it's that same thing like there's so many times in my mind that I'm like I love that font what if I change my accent font to that font but then I go a I love my current accent font B people have brand recognition of my current accent font um all of these things right it can be so easy to get shiny object syndrome almost totally and I think you can you can you know you your band's got room to evolve but it's like for example with your accent fonts if you change that every week and you went for a really elegant serif one week and then you went for a hundred and fun and then you went for like a more weddingy elegant script font and then you know you went for something all caps and like a poster it it really creates a lot of like uncertainty and confusion for your audience.
Also it basically it says to them I don't really know who I am because I'm just talking about and you know and it's so easy to do because if you load up canva it makes it easy it makes it look like there are all these templates and you might think oh that's interesting I've never done that you know I like this one the gradient and a phone held in the middle but actually if all of your Brands is your solid burgundy or whatever having this sort of Castle gradient it's not really going to fit with your Brands and while it might look good there it it fitting with your brand on somebody's busy social media where they follow hundreds of if not thousands of other people you know it's more important yeah and I think the thing is is that point that you said it if you don't look like you know who you are how is anybody going to trust you with your business exactly because they're not going to know who you are that's it I mean also it's like you know these things need to be decided relatively intentionally because um you know an accent funds especially on websites we're talking about you know if you use it for one word or two word headings it could maybe be a bit more decorative but if you're using it for blocks of tax here and there then it needs to be easy to read.
You don't want to put people off because they can't actually read your website or it looks too difficult to read and you know ultimately we want people reading our words and connecting absolutely so yeah the fewer barriers are in the way of that from a usability point of view if I get clients that have a really like if they've come to me maybe they've DIY their brand or something because I still work with quite a few people who've done that but the process is always so much nicer if you've if I'm working with somebody who's had their brand done um because it's just it's a really clear like this is this is the direction right it just makes it so smooth for me and um but if somebody does come to me with a really hard to read accent font you're right I have to be very sparse in where I can put it yeah um and I have to usually put it in places where it can be nice and big so that it's um very readable and that requires code so so that I can turn it off and on in specific places of the site very easily yeah exactly exactly it just needs to be really thought through um yeah absolutely
So obviously and I want this is something I want to talk about we talked a little bit with the big map of all the things that kind of a brand encompasses but I think people can really easily go all right I have a logo I have a brand yeah someone talk us through that officials yeah absolutely so an absolute Bare Basics would be having we've talked about fonts so I would say basically having some typography a color palette um and um logo and I will just talk through those in a bit more detail if that's okay absolutely please do all right so with the typography typography just means fonts but it's basically how your text is going to be laid out so actually one thing we do in our branding exercises is we always do either a website mock or a packaging mock or but basically however the brand is primarily going to be used we consider that in the design because that's really important you pick a font that's difficult and then it's like oh well actually this font you know it needs to be used on small packaging it's not going to work um so um typography it it's it's a way of conveying through design the personality of your brand and it's going to get used a lot because every page that you have copied any page that you have text any blog posts any social media posts that you put out that is an information point it's going to be using those fonts.
So there's some logistic things you want to make sure it is easy to read um we generally tend to do two fonts sometimes three but we don't do more because it gets too confusing um because it can be too much playfulness or whatever so it's a balancing act but um what we would do is we would have um a hero font or a um what did you call it earlier it was really nice what did you call it your you an accent font that's your accent font so we would yeah we would have a font that is well actually yeah we can sometimes be like that so we always have a heading as a basic absolute bare minimum we'd have a header on a body copy font and we would stipulate a way that you should um write um call to actions and buttons um sometimes we add in sub subheadings and accent fonts um for like pull out quotes or things like that um sometimes they could be within the same family.
Sometimes you use the same font in two different ways you know um but usually that's what we would do we would have so for example for well my my brand font actually is Poppins and it's really I love cabbage programs it's like it's really rounded but it's clean it's blocky it's black it's easy to read it's simple for me that it made complete sense one of the things I knew about my branding is I wanted my brand to be in lower case because I wanted all the curves and the roundness of the of my name to come through and when I found the pop into fun I really loved it because actually while I've got all up wanting to be friendly and warm actually it's a it's a lot about being quite bold and clean and sharp with the design as well I'm not sort of all soft and fluffy so having something more you know a brand with a texture in the font or something like that that just wouldn't work for me .
So I used that for my body copy and my headings but in different weights um and then there's Styles I so I for example I would always use my headings very oversized um and left aligned with a blue full stop um and then that gives me a way to bring my brands in even just in a headline and copy um so that would be basically your typography your color palette is obviously the colors you use in your brand so this can be anywhere between I'd say minimum maybe three Shades and up to maybe ten but when we've got ten they there's a lot of neutrals and and shades of the other Shades going on um usually about five and we usually um devise more for web actually ironically because we usually devise more um especially um I've been working with a brand recently in their brand colors it's it's just two colors in their palette um it's like an aubergine kind of kind of a burgundy and and um a sort of slightly green toned beige like a olivey color so they work well together one's light one's dark and we use them inverted but that can be too heavy on the eye to have such a big block color um for of like um the darker color so we've got some tints there that they can use within their brands as well so it all completely seamlessly works together and and the user doesn't even even perceive that there's more colors but it's just nuances of them right yeah just really quickly just for anyone out there watching the Squarespace platform actually only allows you to upload five colors and now there's room for customization through both code and using their font selector and changing a color to a custom color but they they really expect you to have what they call they have a white it doesn't have to be true white.
But a white and a black then you have your accent color and then you have sort of a light and a dark here I'm all backwards here but anyway so you kind of have those five colors and that's how because that's how their system knows how and where to layer things when you're choosing any of the kind of palettes that it auto creates from your brand color um in the way that it anyway you'll watch my Squarespace videos they're out there but no but I think that's a good point because it's it's pretty smart actually if you haven't it's really it's pretty foolproof the way they do it isn't it if you didn't have an idea it gives you a good amount of both.
But I would always recommend choosing your colors rather than just going for one of their ready-made um um because going for already made anything is just a fast track to it being generic by default because it's not yours so um I think yeah personalizing it I would definitely recommend um but yeah that's a good sort of basis of what colors you might have or need and then the last thing I'd say is logos and I'm going to say logos plural and I'll explain why okay yay okay because I think so this gets described in different ways but we recently we've been describing it to clients as like a responsive logo Suite so or a suite of logos which is it means that you have a core logo and we're not changing that but it's just that you might have different versions for different spaces and different sizes specifically so it means that you might have a traditionally stacked logo which is not one that's really mostly sorry that's me trying to be funny um it's um it would be a logo that has like a um an image Central and then it would have the brand name directly beneath it nice and large and then it would have a tagline directly beneath that slightly smaller that would be a really traditional stacked logo.
So you may for your website actually want to have one that doesn't take up quite as much vertical space because you're stopping people being able to get to your content if you've got like an inch and a half of logo at the top of your site and you want it just to fit within one half centimeters to be nice and concise so you might move that what would happen is the designer would provide you with another version with the visual part of it the icon or the visual is over to the left hand side .
It's all horizontal then they might provide you another version where the tagline isn't included or it's just the icon or it's a shortened version of the brand name or something like that because then that version could be used in your website footer it could be used as your social media icon um there's lots of different usages basically but it's that way that with these with the big brands that we buy from all the time we don't even notice it but they have five or six versions of their logo going on you know I mean if you if you take like Starbucks you know they have the logo that they have on the shop front they have the logo they have on the a board sign on the street then they have The Branding they have on the actual sleeve of the coffee cup then they'll have the brands saying you know on the menu when you know and this is outside of other elements like just using their green and using their fonts so it all looks part of their brand I mean that they'll actually have different versions of their logo.
Like even if you pick up a loyalty card it might have a stamp and it might be the mermaid icon as the stamp I'm not sure if I actually don't know but it wouldn't be necessarily as complex of the logo as you might find in a larger space yeah and it goes like you're making a really good point so website you will probably at the very minimum have the one you have at the top of your website and then you'll have the one in the browser icon as well at the very top like at the top of the page exactly yeah the fabric on Squarespace has lovingly changed that to browser icon for non-design type people um but then you like you said you would probably have one you're using on social media you'll probably you might have one on the footer of your website you probably have one for your email marketing and some of these will be the same.
But some of them won't but in the case of Starbucks it will go all the way from the fact that if you get a sit-in cup at Starbucks it's a plain white mug that it has just the mermaid emboss inside like it dips into the cup right on the outside here so they have branded their mugs from there and then you get all the way up into yeah the sleeve the logo outside and all the different versions um even if you have like the little like employee wool and some of them or they're like we do good well they're still all very much branded to them in really sometimes subtle and sometimes not weights which is good it gives that variety yeah exactly exactly and you know I use Starbucks not because I expect every small business to you know have the same sort of marketing budget or anything like that but I think you know it's it's it's a recognizable reference and I think it's one of those things that if you when you start noticing you'll be like oh yeah that's a different version of the logo or it's a slightly smaller one on here or they've moved the text or you know the text goes around the circle in this version.
I mean from a business point of view it's actually good because it allows you um it allows you brand ownership but also room to grow so um you know um during the pandemic I think Starbucks you know they did an at-home service so that was basically I can't remember exactly what it was I guess like a delivery or something but their own brand um but you know they had the logo so all they had to do was they basically got somebody to like just um have um create a new sort of tagline slightly different font weight so that it was recognizably a sub brand and then they've got themselves a ready to go new service um and I think it could be really helpful you know you mentioned Wellness professionals before I mean say if they have a brand and then they run a retreat or they start doing you know they want to do some other kind of work and it needs its own slight identity then borrowing from the identity that your your main brand has is you know it gives you means you don't have to start from scratch you know and people recognize that belongs to you right it's that combination all these things they're when we're saying that they have all these different logos they're still using the same like images iconography they're still using the same fonts most the same font weights probably same spacing um so they have variety but it's still very very much a visible visually recognizable brand over and over and over again and so you're right it's creating that like that variety and the consistency that we've mentioned it doesn't seem um flighty or flaky or like they don't know themselves even though they have all that variety yeah and it's yeah yeah exactly
Having lots of different versions of the logo well not lots of different versions but having more than one version of your logo can be really it just gives you a lot of flexibility um that way that you're not sort of trying to fit you know a square in a circle hole basically like you've got a kit there that serves you so I'd say bare minimum you would need as you say a favicon so that can be that's really small and look at yours on your website now and it's so it's so smart it's so clean that's really nice um I I just went for mine I just went for the blue circle because I knew that's far too small for me to really get a meaningful amount of tax in there so I was just like that's the symbol I will use people associate it with me um you know and that's something we do as well as we think about what's the minimum that could be being in a browser window um you know because it's a really small space but it's it's one of those things as well you've got a load of tabs open.
And it's that's where branding you know it's um it's subliminal because you you just quickly look through them but you're taking in all of those Brands um so it helps you remember which tab you need to go back to so that's why it's important you know and it makes you look more professional as well absolutely so are there any kind of Hang-Ups that you see quite frequently with branding and websites that we haven't already talked about or one you want to elaborate on that we have talked about yeah I think the only thing is I think it's when people don't have a brand outside of their website and that's clearly because I see their social media and it looks different um or their profile picture on social media is is a screen grab of their website it says I created this I put that effort into creating this website and this is this is my whole business your website is a tool in your business and um I think it yeah I I think that when people do just a website for their whole business it starts to it's not it it can be visible to me.
Anyway um I think yeah I think it's great that when you work with a web designer I think it's great that they I know I know you and lots of other web designers do this they you you do some questioning and you ask and you try and distill color palette and brand style and things like that that actually you're putting a reasonable amount of pressure on somebody there to kind of work out those things that actually a part of your overall brand strategy that it'd be good to just work out um beforehand oh so much better so much better I will put my hands up working like I am a website designer I am not a brand designer I make that very clear to all of my clients yeah um so they can come to me with a DIY brand I'm very and I'm happy to work with them but I always always preferred if they've worked with professional because it is just always that much better um experience wise for all parties involved but also for your for your customer or for what shows up on your website um for how it's Community how you're communicating that brand and your values and all of those things yeah put my hands up I'll say that from the get-go.
Can we touch on values because you mentioned it there about brand values yes that's your whole that's your thing for this month so let's absolutely talk about it because it's so important it is really important so yeah so I'm speaking about it a lot this month um it's my theme for the month and I chose it because um June is pride um awareness month and so it's a time that we see a lot of brands well rainbow washing basically um turning their logos rainbow colored um showing support for pride and that's great but it's whether it's Skin Deep um however I'm not going to park on about that you can find plenty of that if you want to follow my Instagram but what I think is really great about websites is using them as an opportunity to share who you are is really valuable I think one of my favorite pages of any website is always the about page I always like to see how people have presented themselves whether it's just you whether it's a team whether there's a bit about your story um I think all of that's really really important.
You know with my clients I often work out a bit of a brand story and then I say to them it's up to you if you want to share that on your about page or not you know because it can they can sometimes feel a bit vulnerable sharing it but I know that as a consumer I love seeing stories and I love it actually I think this is where website can really bring it to life using the the copy and like I've seen some where they've got little Polaroids and it shows their business Journey or it shows you know the generations that have been in this business and it's so effective uh and I think it's such an important part of the brand piece the you know the emotional connection and the trust with the brand so um yeah so I I'm I'm all about um really good about Pages absolutely I love a good about Paige um I think like one thing that I really encourage most of my clients do is to think through their values I usually Point them to Ben and Jerry's values page that because the one on their website is incredible um it's just it really shows who they are what they care about what causes their their their you know spearheading and with Ben and Jerry's we all know it's not skinny they put their butts on the line fairly regularly in support of those call those causes um and yeah.
It can be really really because you is we talk all the way the time in business about how we need to attract the right people but part of that is often repelling the wrong people and I think we're so afraid as business owners sometimes to repel the wrong people but a strong brand strong values um strong copy not being vanilla will turn people who are the wrong fit away and that's okay yeah absolutely yeah because you want the right kind of leads you don't want inbox stuff full of people that aren't your people um yeah totally.
I always love it and it's one of the things I sort of collect as it were a screen grab when I've already seen nice examples on websites it's when and I'm just looking at Ben and Jerry's now you know their email sign up um they say it's like dessert for your inbox you know and they call it the inside scoop I mean why that's genius that's genius you know I know having language like that having a name for your newsletter having some copy that you know makes it more um you know uh interesting for people to want to sign up giving people more of a reason than just sign up for my newsletter I think it's um is brilliant and I think it's a way that you showcase your brand I think that you know websites are for a lot of small business owners the number one Showcase of their business is basically their entire storefront.
So I think that it's nice to use the opportunities there you know to connect whether you know and we've we've given a couple of examples that are a bit more playful but it you know any language that you think speaks to your audience is exactly useful yeah it's about being authentic it doesn't have to be playful it just has to be true right um and I say this quite a lot but I firmly believe that you're right your website cannot stand alone out there you have to do other things and they all need to be consistent but your website is your home base for your messaging for your brand for your community communication for how people access you or purchase from you and your website is you're the home base for all of that um and in my opinion and this could be incredibly biased because of what I do but I do believe that all the other pieces should be pointing back to your website.
I think you're right you have to have consistently consistent social media or whatever that when people then get to your website they go Yep this is the same place like this is the same thing or consistent um like you know I've I've done lots of you know your newsletter same thing should be consistent when they get to your website they think oh this is the same place they meet you in person that is at a networking event or whatever or or and they go oh yeah they get to your website this is the same person same place um so it's a brand is a sort of a holistic living thing almost um yes it's got a very good core but like at the end of the day at least for me I am my brand um so when I first started my business and my same logos I didn't I didn't swear in my business now I swear all the time because I've decided that it's part of who I am and I don't want someone I even swear in my copy and things because I don't want someone to hop on a call with me at one stage and me to let an F-bomb fly and then go oh I didn't know I was working with someone like that.
I want them from the very get go to know who they're getting and that's me and I struggle to filter myself even in front of children as much as I love them but I don't have any so I don't hardly have to do it yeah yeah no absolutely I think that's it it's like the more you can bring your yourself through on your website the better because um you know essentially it's the human element that people are going to connect with everyone can make a website you know you can go on Squarespace you can make a website with a template pretty quick pretty easy bringing you to it and making that clear what that is and making it compelling so that somebody takes an action and contacts you or books an appointment or buys something you know that's that's where the magic happens that's the difference between a website and a business that's absolutely true well I want to say thank you so much for coming on and chatting all things Brands you've brought so many good points and so much insight to branding and web and business um but before we go can you tell everyone where they can find you oh yeah absolutely and so my website is carabendon.com it's Cara with a c um and you can find me on Instagram my handles just at carabenzen um and I'm over on LinkedIn as well but yeah basically on my website and Instagram is where I hang out the most oh fantastic well thank you so much um and I'm gonna sign off um but I really appreciate you so much for showing up and having this conversation with us today thanks for having me sorry about the tech issues at the beginning no worries it happens last week was the whole thing as well but I think we've got it sort of now we know what we're doing brilliant okay I'm just
