Did you know that your website visitors, on average, form their opinion about your website in 3.42 seconds? It seems crazy, but that’s exactly what one study discovered – in only 3.42 seconds people had decided what they thought about your website and if they wanted to shop there or not.
Yikes!
And this may make you start wondering . . .
What first impression am I making?
and
Would a rebrand increase my sales?
The main point that I want you to get from this statistic is this: if there’s one area where you’ve got to go a little above “good enough,” it’s your branding!
If I’m honest, many businesses in the handmade product niche don’t pay enough attention to branding: and by that I mean that their graphic design – as in their colors, their logo, their fonts, the layout of their website, and all that stuff – is just not good enough in today’s really competitive ecommerce world.
So what can you do about that?
Let’s dive in!
It’s very easy to understand why the quality of your products is so important — it’s a very direct relationship: if your product quality is subpar, people won’t purchase it again, right?
But understanding the importance of your brand is a bit harder, because it’s a bit less direct of a relationship.
So before I start talking on how to up-level your handmade brand, I think it’s very helpful to understand WHY your brand is so important.
A good brand has more of a “cascading” effect on your success; look at how a good (or bad) brand will have a trickle-down effect that results in you making more or less profit:
Your brand is the first thing people see when they get your website, so the quality of your branding affects a potential customer’s first impression of your shop.
That first impression will determine if they trust your brand and your products (remember, visitors are deciding all of this in under 4 seconds!), as well as their perceived value of what you are selling.
And that perceived value will directly impact the price you can charge and how many people will buy your products, which obviously directly affects how much you can make.
If your brand is so-so, or is not as appealing as your competitors, that so-so impression will affect everything below it in the diagram, with the end result being your money-making potential — NOT GOOD!
I see many makers using the logic that a crafty/handmade/homemade business can have a homemade-looking logo and brand . . . and I know it sounds harsh but that logic is exactly the OPPOSITE of how you should be thinking.
The truth is that the look and quality of your brand is even MORE important when you have a handmade business.
Your brand is the key to increasing the perceived value of your products – and therefore is the key to increasing the price that you can charge.
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And when you sell handmade you can NOT, I repeat – you can NOT compete on price, you have to compete on value. I have an article about pricing for profit for you to read after this one that will help you determine what your handmade products are really worth.
I know that the internet is full of easy-to-use graphic design tools like Canva and logo templates you can buy in packs and website builders that make it easy to create your own website by dragging and dropping elements onto pages.
And these are GREAT. But the truth is there is a BIG difference between putting together a brand and website (which those tools can make simple!) and putting together a GREAT brand and website.
I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here (or more appropriately Deb-Downer haha!), but I have to talk to you about this.
I see a lot of makers not getting the sales that they want, or they are doing “ok” but they can’t quite reach that next level and they don’t know why . . . and often it comes down to their brand, and the first impressions people get when they visit their shop or website.
First impressions of your business and your products are so important. You only get one chance – you can’t do it again – and often you have like seconds to make that impression.
In today’s internet market of endless product choices, standards have increased across the board. Sub-par websites and brands stick out, and trust is easily lost when a similar product or business is just a click away. Remember, your customers shop on many different websites, and if yours isn’t on par they will trust it less and be less likely to purchase.
Same goes with your social media feeds or anywhere potential customers interact with your brand.
So to scale up your business, you need to level up your brand!
When you are a handmade seller, many times you are competing with products that are mass manufactured, as well as other high-quality handmade products. And you want to have a higher perceived value than those products, you achieve this by being unique, and high quality, and by adding a personal touch. . . and conveying all of those things with your brand. If your brand is homemade-looking, it can lower your perceived value to cutesy or scruffy or lower quality.
And if your perceived value isn’t high, your products are simply not going to sell at the price point that they need to in order for you to make a living from selling your products.
So I see the handmade niche as one of the most important niches in the Ecommerce world where you NEED to have a higher perceived value. You are not manufacturing in mass, you’re not making economies of scale.
You need to have higher margins because you are making the products yourself and you have a cap of how many you can make each week and each month.
Higher margins mean your products have to sell at higher prices, and to sell at higher prices you need to have a brand that creates a high perceived value.
So even though it can be practically easy to do it all yourself with all the design programs on the internet – and some of you are amazing designers and can design a standout brand – many of you aren’t graphic designers and THAT IS OK!
Now — if you aren’t a graphic designer you’re probably wondering what you can do and how you can level up — let’s get into it!
OK now that you’ve heard my soapbox speech as to why your brand is so very important, let’s move on to some strategies for leveling up your brand.
If you’re feeling all stressed out thinking, “Well SHOOT, I’m not a professional designer, but I can’t afford to hire one, what do I do?” don’t fret, it’s OK to start where you’re at.
My absolute best advice is to really simplify what you’re doing. Often if you add too many details or too many colors it won’t come together nicely.
Don’t try to do too much with your colors, your logo, your fonts, or your illustrations. Don’t add too many things or details to your logo.
Your brand doesn’t need to literally represent what you sell. Less truly is more.
Stay simple and let your products shine and do the talking.
I have an article all about creating a brand on a budget, be sure to check it out!
Once you can afford it and you’re feeling serious about growing and scaling your business, hire this out to do a proper rebrand.
An experienced branding company is always going to be the best way to create an amazing brand for your business, especially if they have experience with similar brands and niches.
You don’t want an agency or designer used to working with corporate brands for example. Check their portfolio and make sure their aesthetic is aligned with what you do and that they are used to working with creative, independent retail brands.
Remember not to choose a designer based solely on price – I have a great article about hiring help on Fiverr that talks about pitfalls to avoid when sourcing hired help.
Regardless of if you do it yourself or hire a designer, you will end up with a better end product if you do your homework first.
Look at non-handmade competitor websites and brands, because you are competing with these businesses/products — your website and brand need to be at least as good (if not better!) for you to charge more than these competitors . . . because remember since your products are handmade they cost more by definition to make and you need to charge more to have a sustainable margin.
So for example, if you sell handmade candles, go and look up brands of candles that aren’t handmade and look how those websites are presented and how those brands are presented.
If you sell a homemade moisturizer, go and look at the websites of moisturizer brands and see how they compare – because at the end of the day, these are your competitors. Yes, I know your ideal customers prefer something that’s handmade, but they also see all these other products and all these other brands and all these other websites. And so their brain is kind of adjusted to that level of design, and they expect something similar from your products.
You also should go out and look at your handmade competition; people who are doing really well in your niche. Look at the pictures and listings and brands of your handmade competition, you need to be at or above the perceived value level that you are seeing.
I’m not going to dive into entire branding makeover examples here, but I want to highlight a few logos to show you how a rebrand can change perceived value.
In this first example, the “before” logo has what looks like a hand-sketched ball of yarn and needles and a handwritten “Lucy’s Corner” next to it. Cute, but definitely has a hand-drawn/handmade vibe to it.
What I recommend when you are just getting started and can’t afford a graphic designer yet is to stick to purely typographic logos.
As you can see in the second logo, I just used a simple, professional font and a couple of lines to define it. Simple, but portrays a much more elevated and professional vibe to potential customers.
Next, let’s look at this “Two peas in a pod” logo. The “before” logo has a kind of busy circle pattern around the words, and the words are again more of a hand-written look. All in all it looks a bit crafty.
In the “after” logo you can see I picked two colors that complement each other and a font that pops — again very simple, but professional and memorable.
This is all done in 4 mins in Canva so not even a really great job, but that goes to show how easy it is to elevate a brand by doing less, not more.
I am obviously very passionate about this issue because I see the incredible handmade products that you all make and want you to know how important it is that your brand and your website are equally incredible — always remember that handmade products aren’t an excuse for a “homemade/crafty/glued-together-website-that-doesn’t-really-hold-up” look!
Whether you are at the stage where you need to do it yourself or you are ready to hire someone to do it for you, I have an article that will walk you through 8 important steps to take before you rebrand your business, so be sure to read that next and it’s got LOADS of examples of what makers just like you achieved THEMSELVES without needing to hire out which is quite inspiring so go take a look!
Thanks for reading, and until next time, aurevoir!
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