If you want to be a brand people love, choosing gasp-worthy visuals your customers like is a must. However, this game isn’t so simple. Our visual appetites are never satisfied as we continually fall in love with new designs and style changes. This keeps brands continually adjusting to fit the looks their customers crave, making it crucial to ensure your company’s visuals are being refreshed often so your website, logo, and other images are not seen as outdated.
Refresh vs. Rebrand
It’s important to make clear that a refresh is different from a rebrand. Rebranding is a highly involved process which is often an entire reworking of a company’s image. Whereas a refresh is enhancing your brand’s image to ensure a company’s visuals fit with the current trends.
How Often to Refresh a Logo or Website?
For a logo, a refresh could be needed anywhere from a single year to over twenty years depending on how effective it is, which will also depend on your industry and competitors. Take a look at Oreo. In the last 50 years, they’ve gone through 6 logo refreshes. The main design stays the same, but elements are added to ensure it fits with the style trends of the time.
When it comes to websites, smaller changes should be happening consistently every 2-6 months, so people know your site is still alive. However, when it comes to making major changes to your entire website, try to average around two years. That may sound short, but in this digital age, everything moves quickly.
But due to a variety of factors, such as industry, marketing trends, popularity, and competitors, there is no set timeline to tell you exactly when your company should invest in updating your visuals. After all, you don’t just throw away cash to rework your look if nothing is actually wrong. But how do you know if something’s wrong? Well, take a look at this list to see how you are measuring up…
5 Signs It's Time to Freshen Up Your Look.
1. Refresh if things are starting to look stale.
Does your target audience consider your company’s aesthetics to be “in style,” or do your visuals still carry trends from the previous decade?
Trends and styles move a lot faster than they used to, which makes staying visually fresh harder to maintain. Your website, logo, and other company visuals need to be kept up to parr with the current aesthetics to keep people trusting your let people know your company is relevant.
2. Refresh to create a better user experience.
Does your website and visuals create the best user experience possible?
If you know a way to improve your potential client’s visit to your website, then make the necessary changes asap. Never push pause on an opportunity to enhance your customer’s experience, whether that be making your website more user friendly, adding more Q’s to your FAQ’s, inputting a chatbot, or installing a software which let’s visitors view customized versions of your product. If your website is difficult to navigate or has lost it’s fashionable edge, then it's time to give it a facelift. Make sure your website is easy to use and looks great on all devices.
3. Refresh when you need to be more adaptable.
How does your logo, website, and other visuals look on different platforms and devices?
With the constant changes happening in the digital world, it can be difficult to find a design that perfectly fits with every format. However, in the past 10-15 years we’ve seen a number of companies who have had to rework their logo to keep it recognizable on a variety of digital platforms (especially small little app icons). If your logo is too detailed or does not have an iconized version of itself, then it may be time to freshen things up.
4. Refresh when most of Your competition is Out-Shining You.
How do your brand image compare to your closest competitors?
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer - true in war but also in business. It’s hard to pull ahead if you don’t even know where your competition is at. Make sure you are keeping an eye on the strategies of similar businesses to see how you measure up. What appeal do they have that you don’t? A useful website actually worth going to? A stunning logo that looks perfect on apparel? But don’t just rely on your own opinion of how you need to improve - get an outsider's perspective to see how you visually measure up against some of your competitors.
5. Refresh to solidify your brand's visual identity.
Does your brand’s image seem a bit unfocused?
If your brand visuals seem to be too all-over-the-place, then it may be time to tighten the reigns on some of your company’s design choices. If you don’t already have a brand style guide, then it’s due time you get one. This will involve a refresh of any company visuals that are not in line with the style guide.
Are you need of a refresh? Or maybe you’re still not sure? Schedule a consult, and let us see what we can do for you.
