If there is one area of business which hasn’t been hampered by the recession it’s online retail.
And just like when any potential customer walks into a high street store, the first thing they will recognise is brand.
So why should your website be any different?
Brand awareness has been the cornerstone of retail for as long as anyone can remember and there isn’t a day that goes by when a marketing team doesn’t talk about brand loyalty.
The online supermarket
Ecommerce entrepreneurs have realised that familiarity is the key to increasing their sales, with many online store front pages resembling the entrance to Tesco
Ten years ago, when Great Britain first began shopping online, there was a huge difference between high street shops and online stores.
Before the days of PayPal and VeriSign and other forms of ecommerce security, consumers were fearful of entering their credit card details online.
Those times are long forgotten now as sleek web design, usability standards and new ways of advertising have narrowed the gap between walking down the high street and shopping online for goods.
Ecommerce entrepreneurs have realised that familiarity is the key to increasing their sales, with many online store front pages resembling the entrance to Tesco, complete with bright colours and special offers around the entrance and visible categories for the browser.
But as an interactive tool, a website takes this familiar element one step further, by allowing consumers to browse not by function or activity, but specifically by brand.
How do I promote brands in my online store?
At the basic level, allowing your customers to browse your products by brand is a good start.
You can provide someone with the most technical products at the cheapest prices, but if they know nothing about the brands, they are far less likely to make a purchase.
The true beauty of shopping online is how specific a search can be, which saves time compared to rummaging through the racks of TK Maxx.
So let’s say someone is searching for a new pair of running shoes in a well known online sports store.
They go to the running shoes section and find 1,000 styles to look through. Now that’s overwhelming for even the most web-savvy shopper and while your website may have filters in place to narrow down the results by size or colour, few customers tend to use them.
Now, let’s say someone is searching for a new pair of running shoes and goes to a brand-specific section of your site, like Saucony, a well-known running brand.
Instead of 1,000 styles of running shoes to choose from, they might then have 300 styles of Saucony trainers instead.
The search has been narrowed down and because the results are brand specific, the customer is more likely to know which product they want.
