Website design should reinforce brand by portraying culture, atmosphere and adhering to general design guidelines. And while it may sound like I’m stating the obvious… your logo is the pillar of your brand, with prominent website placement and from which all styles are derived.
A logo is your brand identity. And I bet you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve seen a website with the logo placed somewhere other than in the top left or center of the header. Right? This is because you want to use your logo to set up and meet expectations, both visually and functionally.
Setting Up Expectations
Your logo sets up expectations for customers with color, design and general “vibe”. If you’re not happy with your logo or don’t think your logo accurately portrays your business… STOP and redesign the logo. Don’t design a website around a brand you’re not 100% happy with. It’s an expensive mistake.
Recently, I was working with someone to spruce up a pre-built WordPress template, and she began to question her DIY logo. So, we put the website mockups on hold and focused our efforts on sprucing up her logo. It would have cost her more money in the long-run to design a website around a brand she didn’t love.
A few recent examples in our portfolio include a logo recharge. Not a redesign, but rather an update to more accurately enhance a new website design and increase brand recall.
Sarpy County Cooperative Head Start didn’t even really have a logo on its website. So before our Omaha web design team tackled a redesign, we tackled that logo head-on. Here’s the website header on the current website:
And here’s the new logo we’ll be working with for the new website:
Another recent example is an Omaha pillar, I-Go Van & Storage. A simple logo spruce-up from our logo designer went a long way before we redesigned (new website to launch soon):
Meeting User Expectations
A website visitor has an expectation that your logo will be placed in the “usual spot” (upper left) – and expectations play a large role in user experience.
Case studies have shown that placing the logo in any location other than the top left-hand corner can hurt your site. NN Group found that centering your logos will make it roughly six times harder to return to the homepage of a site than left-aligned logos and that right-aligned logos hurt brand recall.
When designing the flow of a site, our web designers must account for the need to return to the homepage. Rather than providing a “home” button in the navigation bar, the logo has been the traditional and expected method for providing users with a way to return home. It’s beneficial to meet the user’s expectations and link the logo home. And for the visitor spending any time on your site at all, this continuous logo home-base can help reinforce your brand.
So, Don’t Use a Terrible Logo
Your take away: use a logo that reflects your culture, services and products. Don’t settle because it’s what you’ve always had, or because your DIY method saved you a couple thousand dollars. The gain from using the RIGHT logo in the right ways on your website is increased brand recall, increased conversions and long-term use of your current website design.