5 key characteristics of web brands
The web brand is useful, clear, simple, interactive, and most importantly, customer-centric.
“Google has knocked Microsoft off the top spot and been named the most powerful global brand of 2007,” Gemma Simpson wrote for Silicon.com in April 2007. “It’s the second year in a row a tech brand has beaten household names such as Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Toyota.”
The brand ranking was carried out by market researcher, Millward Brown Optimor, and factored in financial performance and consumer sentiment. Google had a brand value of more than $66 billion, nearly double its value in the 2006 ranking.
A consumer poll published in January 2007 by online branding magazine, brandchannel.com, found that Google had retained its title as the world’s most influential brand. Video-sharing site, YouTube, and online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, were at No. 3 and 4.
Commenting on the poll, Reuters stated that “Internet companies are becoming more important to people than firms that operate in the real world.”
Here are the five most important characteristics of web brands:
- Web brands are useful
- They have a clarity of purpose
- The embrace simplicity
- They interact and engage
- They are customer-centric
(1) Web brands are useful
Google has a market capitalization of $153 billion because it is useful. I will easily change my car brand, my mobile phone brand, my shoe brand, but I will not change Google. I will not change from Google because it helps me find stuff faster than other search engines.
Search is purposeful. We don’t search for the fun of it. We search because we need to find something that will help us complete a task. The Web is a functional, no-frills pace. It may be our goal to spend more time with our family, but we go to the Web to get a good deal on a family vacation.
(2) Clarity of purpose
When you arrive at the homepage of a quality web brand you know immediately what it is about-what it can do for you. A web brand is not a murder mystery. It tells you who did it right from the very first line.
“Google is an absolutely phenomenal brand in the sense that it is very clear what it stands for and it has perceived leadership and innovation,” Peter Walshe, global brands director at Millward Brown, told Silicon.com.
(3) Making life more simple
Quality web brands save us time. They don’t force us to think too much. The BUY button is nice and big. It’s easy to figure out what to do next. It’s hard to get lost. We only need to read the sentence once to understand it. We are not overawed and confused by too many choices.
(4) Web brands interact and engage
Craigslist has 10 million customers and gets over four billion page views per month. It has 22 employees. Wikipedia is a hugely popular website. It has 10 employees. Skype has 171 million customers. It has 510 employees.
Web brands have a different concept of the organization. They see the Web as the organization. They see their customers as part of the organization.
(5) Web brands are customer-centric
Great web brands are built around the customer. They don’t start out with this question: How can we make money out of customers? Rather, they start with this question: How can we help customers do things they need to do?
Roy Johnston says:
Added on April 30th, 2007 at 10:41 amIf the brand name becomes a verb in the language, if definitely can be daid to have made it. The verb ‘to google’ has far exceeded in significance the classic case of the verb ‘to hoover’.
Robert Salsman says:
Added on April 30th, 2007 at 1:36 pmThinking about Branding and Customer-centricity…for our Public site, we have 3 main categories of “Customers”: Customers, Potential recruits and investors.
Now while Investors and Recruits certainly care about whether we service our customers well or not, Investors are more concerned with with the question “Does this company generate the maximum return from it’s investment”, and recruits with the question “Does this company have a good work environment, and opportunity for me to grow”.
How to deal with these different classes of customers on one site, whose interests are sometimes in direct conflict with one another?
Xinru Page says:
Added on April 30th, 2007 at 11:04 pmI imagine another factor in the popularity of web brands is people’s pocketbooks. Many of the popular brands give me value without costing a cent (once I have my internet connection). As long as they continue to make it easy for me to get value, I’ll continue to use them. On the other hand, I’ll often switch cars and phones right away if I find one that costs less, while still retaining a reasonable amount of features.
This also comes into play in that I can explore web brands for free, building a bond with ones that I like. I won’t have the opportunity to become attached to many brands in the real world since there is usually a price barrier to exploration and I have to limit what I buy.
Atom says:
Added on May 1st, 2007 at 1:07 amIt would be good to see McGovern veer off, even if a little bit, his beaten-hard path to talk about something different for a change. This is the same story over and over again, which others only need to say once. Well I guess if people are still willing to pay to hear that old stuff in seminars, McGovern’s got himself a reason to continue. Every article can potentially hit a first-time reader. For anyone else, it’s the same stuff, reshuffled, every week.
Gerry McGovern (blog author) says:
Added on May 4th, 2007 at 6:24 pmWebsites with many customer segments is a constant challenge, Rob. My belief is that you should look after the actual customers first and foremost. Investors and potential job applicants are indeed important but they can have their own special sections. When I go to a website I like to be hit with its primary purpose in unmistakeable fashion.