Website Branding Best Practices for Ecommerce Stores

One of the most important website branding best practices comes down to consistency. Once you define your brand, sticking with it helps build trust with your target audience. 

As part of that task, it’s best practice to view the branding of your website holistically. “Not just website design of logos and colors,” says Sara Mote, cofounder and creative director of design agency Mote, “but the feeling someone gets within seconds of landing on the site. Strong branding is going to create recognition, trust, and emotional connection.”

In this guide, you’ll learn more about the key elements of website branding, plus Sara’s best practices for a coherent website experience.

What is website branding?

Website branding is the translation of your brand identity into the digital experience. It should work alongside other aspects of your brand to tell a cohesive story. “Branding on your website will be complementary to, for example, a hang tag on a clothing item for a fashion brand, the unboxing experience, and social media assets,” Sara says.

Good website branding is also concerned with what the visuals communicate to site visitors. For example, through the use of bright colors and modern fonts, a brand might wish to convey youthfulness and fun. Similarly, a website branded with black-and-white photography, a subdued color palette, and a simple logo may wish to evoke timelessness and longevity.

Your website branding should also be in harmony with the more technical aspects of your website design. For example, you will likely want to use images that won’t negatively impact your website’s loading speed or make it difficult to read a critical call to action (CTA). 

Why website branding matters

Effective website branding complements your website design and helps to drive business growth in addition to being aesthetically pleasing. Sara says good website branding can support:

• Trust. A consistent visual identity among touchpoints and brand webpages cultivates an emotional connection that fosters longer user engagement.

• Conversions. Clear website design elements combined with consistent branding reduce friction in the shopping experience and make purchase decisions easier.

• Retention. When people immediately understand a brand’s value, they tend to stay longer on a website.

You can also use your web design and branding to encourage lead generation while telling visitors something about your brand personality. For example, you might design a newsletter pop-up in your brand’s signature bright colors with a friendly request for the visitor’s email address, communicating that your brand personality is lively and warm. 

Key elements of website branding

• Typography
• Photography
• Color palette
• Tone

Sara says it’s not any single element that makes effective website branding. “It’s the relationship between them and all of the decisions that make everything cohesive,” she says. The following website design elements all contribute to strong website branding, according to Sara.

Typography

Typography can help set a brand’s tone, speak to quality, and impact how readable your site feels. Sara says less can be more when it comes to type: “One typeface used really intentionally can be much more impactful than six typefaces used expressively.”

Leah Marcus, cofounder of Good Girl Snacks, explains how leaning into two distinct brand fonts has helped to define the brand. In the brand’s website design, a simple font clearly conveys product details like ingredients, flavor, and crunch. “But then we also have doodles that kind of evoke the flavors,” Leah says on Shopify Masters.

These essential elements of the brand’s visual identity carry through to the product labels, too. “Hot Girl Pickles, which is the name of our product, is in a really fun font, whereas Good Girl Snacks … is in a more classic font,” Leah says.

Photography

According to Sara, the photography style you use in your website design, including how you edit your visual assets, can help define your brand’s tone and encourage brand recognition. 

Chandler Honey strategically used photography in its branding efforts when launching as an online-only brand at the height of COVID. “What I did then was really invest in product photography, even before we had any sales, because I knew that if people weren’t going to be able to taste themselves, they needed to eat with their eyes,” founder Tique Chandler says on Shopify Masters.

Color palette

A color palette, or color scheme, is a few select colors that make up your website’s visual identity. To help visualize how certain colors work with other elements, like typography and photography, Sara recommends making a mood board.

Bath and body care brand Wild, which avoids single-use plastics in its packaging, strategically used color to stand out in the sustainable category. Cofounder Charlie Bowes-Lyon says that when looking at competitors, he saw dark greens and grays.

“We set out purposely to create something that was the opposite really of what sustainability has typically been,” Charlie says. “It’s almost over the top, but not quite. It’s not neon, but it’s not far off.”

Tone

Your website branding and content strategy should work together to set your brand tone, or the way in which you communicate and express your brand personality. In your website layout, this encompasses the copy you use in header images, on product pages, on landing pages, and in pop-ups.

Feminine hygiene brand The Honey Pot conscientiously uses an irreverent tone to make women’s health topics more approachable. “Humor is a massive opportunity for us to get into those sticky subjects,” says the brand’s former VP of marketing, Giovanna Alfieri, on Shopify Masters. 

The brand weaves this unique tone throughout its entire website, striking a balance between being tongue-in-cheek and informative to get shoppers’ attention and influence their purchase decisions. Its homepage, for example, features a ticker that says, “Made by humans with vaginas,” and the product page for its boric acid and herb suppositories asks website visitors: “pH outta whack?”

Website branding best practices for ecommerce

• Define your brand
• Organize your brand assets
• Incorporate your brand story throughout your website
• Prioritize branding your product pages
• Be consistent across all touchpoints

Great website branding is the result of deliberate decisions that build on each other, Sara says. Here are the best practices she uses to successfully brand her clients’ websites.

Define your brand

Before you touch any elements like tone or photography, it’s key to clearly define your brand identity. Developing a brand strategy that includes brand guidelines will give you something concrete to reference at every decision point and maintain brand consistency as you evolve or experience business growth.

“The strongest websites start with a very clear understanding of the brand before focusing on aesthetics,” Sara says. Your brand guidelines should include sections on how and where to use your logo, characteristics of your brand voice, and social media do’s and don’ts. They should also present a clear visual hierarchy among your chosen visual elements, like your fonts and colors.

Developing brand guidelines helps you define your brand’s unique point of view in the market and avoid jumping on trends, a common mistake Sara says she’s seen brands make. “A lot of brands end up looking visually current but emotionally interchangeable,” she says. Understand your brand on a deep level to stand apart from your competition. “People always think Apple products are so simple, but the simplest things are the most nuanced and require the most thought to get right,” she says.

Organize your brand assets

You will inevitably add, remove, and update pages on your website over time. When making these changes, Sara says using a tool like Figma or Shopify’s own asset management system can help save time and ensure your branding remains consistent. “Mote relies heavily on organized brand guides and shared asset systems,” she says. 

With Shopify, you can centralize all your brand assets—like your images, colors, and fonts—within your Brand settings page. From here, they’ll sync across your sales channels, themes, and apps for a unified brand experience. Use Shopify’s logo maker to customize a unique logo that you can incorporate into your website and beyond, such as on your packaging, merchandise, or other marketing materials. Building a cohesive brand identity like this helps customers identify your products and services.

Incorporate your brand story throughout your website

Once you’ve defined your brand identity, sprinkle your brand story throughout your website. You could tell your founder’s story on your About page or reference your brand values in your product descriptions. “Storytelling is incredibly important because people connect emotionally [with a brand] before they connect logically,” Sara says.

Your brand story should incorporate facts about your business, like specifics about your background, when you founded the company, and your emotional “why” behind it all. It can be inspired by your target audience’s needs or the problem you’re solving. To make people feel something, communicate that your brand values align with your customers’ values.

The About page on the website for women’s intimates brand Knix, for example, highlights how their founder, Joanna Griffiths, started Knix out of frustration with the lack of innovation in leak-proof underwear. This is the foundation of the Knix brand, which “celebrates the freedom to live unapologetically free.” As part of their brand strategy, each product page reinforces this philosophy by describing how their items are personalized, comfortable, and designed for confidence. 

Prioritize branding your product pages

Sara recommends incorporating your brand messaging throughout your product pages, too, not just your homepage or About page. “I see weaknesses more so on a product page than on a homepage, because everyone is so focused on that first impression on a homepage,” she says.

Search engines and social media ads can drive web traffic directly to any of your product or landing pages, meaning one of them, rather than your homepage, could be a visitor’s first encounter with your company. Leverage your content strategy to draft on-page copy that fosters an emotional connection with the consumer and preemptively address their concerns or questions. “The purchase decision ultimately happens on the product page,” Sara says. “That’s where trust really needs to be built.”

Be consistent across all touchpoints

It might be tempting to focus your branding efforts on only a few of your web pages, but Sara stresses that when every touchpoint speaks the same visual and tonal language, recognition builds, and so does trust. Tour your entire website, viewing the experience from the customer’s point of view. Then take the time to apply your chosen logos, colors, fonts, and background images across every page, from branding your homepage to designing your newsletter signup page to customizing your checkout flow. 

Also, remember that your website doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s one piece of a larger brand world, and it should feel that way. “The strongest brands are going to feel intentional and recognizable at every level,” Sara says. That means your site should feel continuous with your packaging, your social media, and your unboxing experience.