Simran Jaiswal
If your brand looks unprofessional, people tend to consider your work a hobby. When this happens, clients may feel they can control the relationship or tell you how to do your job. If you want to set your business up for long-term success, start here.

Mistakes That Make Your Brand Look Unprofessional

Your brand matters 

When building your brand its important to look professional. You might have done it your self when you started your business. Or purchased a pre-made theme and now wondering if it was a good fit at all. Or you’ve worked with a designer but wasn’t sure they captured your brand’s essence in their designs. Looking like a professional ensures you are attracting the right clients. No matter what business you’re in, there are a few things you want from your clients. For example, clients that respect your boundaries, view you as the expert and are willing to pay you for your time. 

We get a few sec to grab the attention of our clients; to tell them what you do, who you do it for, to portray your personality & showcase your professionalism. Whether its logo at the top of our website or graphics, its essential that our brand speaks to audience. 

There’s thousands of people doing the same thing other brands could catch their eyes if your brands look unprofessional or resonate with your dream client, they gonna have no problem scrolling right past you. Those first impressions are important to make connect with clients and target audience. So, things might be doing that make your brand look unprofessional? 

NO BRAND CONSISTENCY

Do you feel like your brand yet not there? so you happen to tweaking changes: colours, fonts, & graphics? trying to create cohesive branding only to find yourself completely lost? Spending countless hours on google only to find inspiration. Even if you find some amazing designs; how do you know which 1 is the best for your brand? We often work with bloggers and e-commerce business who say this very sentence to us:“My website and branding don’t represent me at all. It’s so disjointed from what I am trying to put out there!”If it happens, it’s a huge problem. They are losing collaborations with brands. They are losing sales. It’s a very dangerous place to be.

The problem with consistency it always comes from simple things: no clear strategy. Most likely, you have not gone the process of creating a strong brand foundation Your visuals are simply a reflection of that.

To create a strong brand you need to do your homework first:

  • Get clear on your brand values, mission, and vision, Create your brand story,
  • Discovery your brand personality and vibe,
  • Figure out your ideal client

Once you do that, you then are able to create a brand identity (the visuals) to reflect that strategy. Right visuals can:

  • Subconsciously send your brand message to your ideal customers within a fraction of a second to make the BEST first impression,
  • Help you build the like and trust factor that you absolutely NEED to sell anything,
  • Make building a relationship with your target market super easy and natural,
  • Make selling a breeze, because you’re simply the perfect choice for your audience

UNPROFESSIONAL BRAND IDENTITY & WEB DESIGN

What I might say here might be a bit controversial, but actually design is a commodity. Its cheap & easy to buy beautiful design; find beautiful designs all over the place. The problem is that – they were created to look beautiful, not created to reflect your unique brand personality and values. They were not created taking account who your ideal client & customer are what they respond to. A strategic brand identity designer won’t jump to design right away, or would’t ask you to create your inspirational post for them. 

The branding process should go like this:

  • Deep discovery process to figure out your brand mission, vision, values, vibe and ideal customer,
  • Diagnosing any problems that need fixing (especially important when you’re re-branding existing business),
  • Creating visual solutions to represent the strategy of your brand (choosing perfect colors, fonts, photography, etc)
  • Creating a cohesive, consistent design to all brand touch-points (where your customers get in contact with your brand)

Brand identity designers who understand strategy is key, will not start designing anything before they go through this process with you. You also will not be asked to choose your brand colours and create your mood-board. There’s an entire science behind colors and you should pick the perfect shades to send the right message to the subconscious mind of your customers. If you didn’t have a chance to go to that process, consider it before spending any more money on design alone.

Read more : Colours on branding 

CHARACTER’S IN FORMATION 

Low quality graphics-

Whether its your logo, images or your website or social media graphics, you need to ensure that everything put online is in high quality. These small thoughtful touches make a world of difference. In a world where everything is at your fingertips, achieving this polished look is super easy to achieve and you won’t regret making the effort to tidy up your look. Low quality images makes your brand looks cheap, Do your business justice & ensure nothing’s degrading the quality of your brand. Your business deserves a visual identity that showcases just how great your products/services are.

Too many fonts-

It looks chaotic and unrefined, gives off the impression that you couldn’t decide. Being strategic and picking 2/3 fonts embody your brand will allow you to really knuckle down & focus on speaking to your dream clients. Take some time to select 2/3 fonts that truly represent your brand, choose them because they speak to your people, not because you like them. 

Not enough space-

Clean, white space is massively underrated! Often trying to fill every inch of their space with something, It’s an era of minimalism! Take time to learn a little bit about kerning & line heights to ensure that fonts & text are easy to read & have enough space in-between. Keep designs and layouts neat & clean helps to portray professionalism. Such things encourage people to read rather than click off your site. 

UNDELIVERED BRAND PROMISES

Customer service-

Promoting your business is only 1st step, as audience knows about your business, you need to have good customer service & audience interaction to grow a profitable business. Whether you have a corporate aesthetic or personal aesthetic, it’s still important to be taken seriously while interacting with your audience. Keep in mind that these audience members may become paying customers and you want them to see you as an expert and professional in your field.

Professional email account-

Maintaining a professional image is important for keeping your clients trust & appearing credible online… Routing your email through your business’s domain name shows that your business is well establish & genuine which is likely to make customers feel more comfortable dealing with you.

Business voice-

A common mistake that happens with small business owners, is a brand voice disconnect with their audience interactions. We can perfect it for our websites, but often we forget to roll it over to all aspects of our business. Your brand voice should be present on each Instagram caption, email and phone call. If your website is hyper-professional but your phone calls are too personal, your audience will be confused and feel like there was a false representation.

If you’re interested in our branding identity packages, I would love to hear from you. We provide all of our clients with brand guidelines, showing you exactly how to execute your logos, colour palette, fonts and more – this offers consistency across all of your platforms and allows your dream client to truly see who you are and what you do.