AUDIN Web Design

I live in the middle of about five major shopping centers in Cary, North Carolina. The shopping centers are of two types: The ones with generic signs and the ones with their own custom sign. The shopping centers that have the generic signs—the blocky, back-lit signs mandated by the shopping center developers—are becoming desolate and very few people shop there. The shopping centers that are allowed to have their own custom sign do very well.

From personal experience it is very hard to distinguish one store from another in the shopping centers that have the one size fits all blocky, same colored back-lit signs. I had been shopping at one center because of the large convenient grocery store for some time. I did not see a local watering hole (now my favorite bar) for almost eight months of shopping at this shopping center.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is a shopping center that opened three months ago (which I visit rarely) and I could name almost every store (about 24 of them—most of which I care very little about) by name or at least describe their logo—everything from Pinky Toes party place to Ruckus Pizza.

This is the power of branding. Think about it the next time you go about developing your website. Think about how important branding is to your business. Just putting your name (or even your logo) in a template doesn’t mean you’ve branded yourself sufficiently.