Brand stand-out has been one of the buzz-phrases of the design industry for years, and is now well understood by clients. Everyone wants their brand to be the one that's different, the one that everyone remembers, the one that stands out from the crowd.
Take a look at the promotional materials of almost any marketing-focused agency and you're sure to find the words 'stand-out' in there somewhere.
Online, there is another, more difficult, task that is often overlooked: helping organisations understand how to 'fit in'.
In every category of communications apart from the internet, brand stand out is achieved by varying well established formats and approaches by a relatively small amount. Varying this format too much, in an attempt to be more attractive to consumers, has the opposite effect: consumers have to re-learn the basic rules before they can take in the information they want. A magazine with its contents and highlights in the centre pages is certainly different, but unlikely to succeed. Many have tried similar tactics: only those appealing to tiny, specialist niche markets have succeeded.
Imagine a TV station where the picture was always broadcast in a circle. It's a great 'stand-out' idea: innovative, unique, and certainly memorable. No-one would forget it, but would it succeed? Probably not – it would be too far from the standards that the average TV viewer is comfortable with.
In some areas, like annual reports, there are legislative standards that determine what needs to be included, yet there is still an enormous disparity between a great annual report and a poor one, even if they share an identical pagination. Here, due to the effect that any misunderstanding could have on an individual's finances, standards have been imposed.
In other areas consistent behaviour or characteristics have evolved: many products and services share consistent approaches: standards help 'consumers' to understand how to judge one product against another. More than this, they give them the confidence to buy: there is a reassurance in driving the new Ferrari with controls in the same place as the old Skoda.
Standard practices are an essential part of the process of consolidation in any marketplace, and in particular to the acceptance of new media channels. Without some common ground, everyone loses out.
The world wide web is beginning its first major period of consolidation now. This is clearly evidenced by end-user behaviour. Survey after survey among 'ordinary' internet users highlights the same issue: make websites work more like each other. Few, if any, real people want every site they visit to be fundamentally different from every other – particularly if they do basically the same things.
As a result, an essential part of the design process for any new stakeholder website involves building a clear picture of the established standards and practices across sites with a similar purpose or sites used by similar audiences. If end-users visit your site and are immediately able to understand its design, they will feel comfortable with making immediate use of it, and will feel welcome and confident. Undermining their confidence by presenting an incomprehensible design is unlikely to encourage them to absorb messages: they will be more focused on figuring out what to do next.
This does not mean that all sites should be the same. As we discussed earlier, small variations in approach can make a big difference to the end result. The challenge is to incorporate that the key characteristics required to meet the expectations of a user, while ensuring that the unique characteristics of your site exceed those same expectations.
In practice, market analysis has particular effect on a few key areas of website design:
Site structure should take into account where users might find equivalent content in an equivalent site. For example, there is unlikely to be competitive advantage in organising content into sections that are different from every other business in your sector. Users will simply struggle to find what they need and will be less likely to focus on what you tell them when they (hopefully) get there.
Content itself can be heavily influenced by market standards. If a key competitor is delivering high-quality information on a subject seen as important in your sector, it should influence what your site contains: rather than being seen as a 'me too' you will be seen as being in-touch and responsive to the needs of your audiences.
Functionality may be heavily influenced by the market around you, particularly where you are introducing a new service that end-users may have experienced in another, possibly unrelated, area of business. Given that you will be expecting them to interact with you in a new way, and that it is probably not the main reason they have a relationship with you, it makes sense to understand what functionality they will be comfortable using. For example, it makes no sense to add a bookshop to your membership services website without a clear understanding of how Amazon and their peers are already selling books to the same people.
Language is often overlooked, but can be one of the most potent weapons in ensuring familiarity and comfort in your audiences. Adopting established naming conventions for navigation will help site users to find what they need quickly, while aligning with the language used in best practice examples from your sector can help to raise the perception of your site in the eyes of your users.
Visual language is the area where it would seem there are most benefits from being different. However, even here, there can be advantages to fitting in to some degree. Take the launch of a new venture: at times there will be strong reasons to stand out from the existing market, to deliberately challenge the perception of what an 'x' should be like. But in other circumstances, sharing visual characteristics with other 'x's' can lend credibility and stature to the offer. This is particularly relevant in government, where end users want a certain 'governmental' quality to underline the authority and integrity of the information in the site.
We integrate market analysis into the early stages of every project we undertake: we feel that it plays an essential part in establishing the strategic direction a project should take. Bypassing market analysis increases risk: there is neither a clear understanding of market context; nor a firm benchmark against which to objectively review the design approach.
Carrying out effective analysis is a relatively straightforward process. We have established market mapping and assessment techniques that provide us with meaningful design input for projects of all sizes and complexities. From basic desk research through to extensive performance benchmarking exercises, every project can benefit from the additional knowledge that market analysis provides.