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Ecommerce Branding Guide

Learn exactly what it takes to lock in ecommerce branding that works for your bottom line.

Why read this guide?

Here’s where your company is headed: you have finally become the brand you always wanted to be.

This guide is about how to get there.

When you’ve reached the top, after following-through on the ecommerce branding guide’s steps below, you can expect a future that looks like this:

  • Everyone who needs to know about your brand knows about your brand and exactly what it stands for.
  • When looking at your pricing, customers consider your brand and are willing to pay more to shop with you because you’ve earned it.
  • Your customers voluntarily tell the story you worked so hard for them to tell…because it’s true!
  • Your brand is powerfully sewn throughout your marketing, your products, and the customer experience. It’s like an identity. Everything else emanates from it and confirms it.
Ecommerce Consultant Yates Jarvis

Author's Bio

Hi, I’m Yates. I’m the Founder and Principal Consultant here at 2 Visions, a boutique ecommerce consultancy specializing in DTC strategy, marketing, research, and executive coaching.  I also serve as a Fractional CMO, helping brands transform their ecommerce and marketing operations for profit-driven growth. Connect with me on LinkedIn or through the 2visions.org website.

See my articles or visit my profile to connect on social media.

Yates Jarvis

Founder, Principal, & Fractional CMO

Instructions on How to Use This Guide

This isn’t a long-winded article. It’s short and to the point so that it can be quickly useful to C-level and senior leaders.

  1. Read each section carefully and slowly.
  2. Double check that you understand the section and think about if you have already completed this work.
    1. Have you done it recently enough? (things change)
    2. Have you done it with the right quality? (no shortcuts)
    3. Have you done it fully? (half-baked won’t work)
  3. Use the prompts we provide and write down on a piece of paper any areas that you think need follow-up. These could be key areas of opportunity for your business.
  4. Once you have read through the guide and noted any ecommerce branding areas that stood out for greater inquiry and planning, organize that list into a ranked list that considers impact, effort, timing, and cost.
  5. Tackle item #1.
  6. Get help. If I could be of service to you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Section 1: Assess Your Brand Today (in its current state)

Remember: Brand Planning is Relative!

First thing we do is take a look at where you are today because any planning on next steps has to be relative to that position.

Ecommerce Branding Areas to Consider

Walk this list. Which of these do you feel has room for improvement in terms of your a) understanding and insights, b) planning and strategy, and/or c) execution. Mark L (low), M (medium), H (high) or IDK (I don’t know) for each based on your perceived room for improvement.

  • Your market (specifically look at competitors)
  • Your sub-market or niche (again, competitor-focused)
  • Your brand’s value proposition(s)
  • Your brand’s differentiator(s)

Section 2: Define Your Brand Goal (in its future state)

Walk this the list below now and jot down goals for the performance of your future brand- what you want to get out of it.

You are imagining not what you think is doable but what you want to goal towards. Set goals for how much your brand will be factored into the following, by customers:

  • Purchase conversion
  • Purchase price
  • Loyalty

If you don’t think your future brand should impact these three items, you shouldn’t be completing a branding guide. Perhaps the big question for you might be, how much should I expect a revamped brand to impact these items? Now that’s a good question. That’s where I help. Feel free to reach out to kick start a convo.

Next, set goals for how your brand will impact:

  • Organic traffic
  • Ad conversion
  • Referral traffic
  • AOV

Other items to consider:

  • How many months/years do you have to hit these brand goals?
  • Are there incremental milestones of achievement you feel would be acceptable?
  • What budget can you commit to achieving these goals? Or to approach it another way, what ROI would you need to have to justify budget dedicated to achieving these goals?

Section 3: Build a Plan for Ecommerce Brand Development

Once you have assessed the current state of your ecommerce brand, defined the future state, and set a timeline and budget, we now would need to connect the dots via an ecommerce branding plan. The plan is the how-to journey to get from where you are today to where we need to be in the future. You will want to identify the following for each activity/initiative you plan:

  • KPI Targets (leading indicators)
  • Relevant and correlated future goal target (from Section 2)
  • Due dates
  • Person responsible for driving the initiative
  • Minimum budget

Section 4: Implementing Ecommerce Branding Initiatives

Even with the best plans, implementation could be an area that prevents the business from realizing the gains you’d expect from your branding plan. Take a look at these areas of implementation in your creative and customer experiences and mark L (low), M (medium), H (high) or IDK (I don’t know) for each based on your perceived room for improvement.

  • Quality fit
  • Messaging fit
  • Aesthetic fit
  • Voice fit
  • Experience fit (includes service)
  • Packaging fit
  • Partner fit

Summary

That’s it! The opportunity for your brand is not in any secret sauce tips and tricks, it’s in the slow, methodical execution of competing via your brand. If you take a few minutes to review the items above and really understand each item, you have a great shot at identifying opportunities to level up your ecommerce branding so that it starts to work for you.

Let's connect in the next few days?