When a Website Redesign Turns Into a Brand Refresh (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

Rice and beans. Peanut butter and chocolate. Website redesigns and brand refreshes. That last combo really hits the spot.

Holding a Mirror Up To Your Business

A company website takes on a lot of different jobs. It can be your main sales rep, wholesale distributor, employee recruiter, and investor pitch all rolled into one. The homepage is often the first impression your business makes on a potential customer. Ultimately a website is where someone decides whether or not they trust a company to do what it says. 

It’s also one of the best examples of every part of a business’s core values and identity coming together in one place: brand, messaging, style, and content. At Kahawai, we’ve regularly seen that if a client comes to us with even one of those things not feeling like the other, then the entire site can feel off. The friction felt from the misalignment is usually subtle, but sometimes it hits you over the head. And no matter the degree, this mismatch can cost your business authority and legitimacy.

I think everyone has had an experience at least once where you tap onto a website and you feel a spark of interest right away. Everything from the style, photography, color palette, and text on screen just click instantly with you personally. It loads fast, feels slick, and appears to be reading your mind. It seems worth your immediate attention and eventual investment. It makes me think of the feeling Marie Kondo talks about when tidying one’s home. She says that when something “sparks joy”, you physically feel “…a little thrill, as if the cells in your body are slowly rising.” And that’s how you know it deserves the honor of staying in your home. Except here, it’s not a favorite sweater worth keeping but a website worth bookmarking. 

As a person with a design background, of course I look at a company’s website through a specific lens but I think we all go by vibes and gut reactions a lot more than we may care to admit.

Opportunity Costs And Missed Connections If You Skip Pairing a Brand and Website Refresh

This is a scenario that I don’t like to see personally as a creative director but really hate to imagine from the client’s point of view. Let’s say that a company moves forward with a website redesign using a logo and tagline that haven’t been touched in years. The site launches, looks and reads great, but something still feels off. Internally, the team senses it. And externally? Website visitors do, too… even if they can’t name exactly why. Looking at the analytics, it’s obvious that people bounce off the website pretty quickly. A few months later, we’re called back in to refresh the logo and the brand. That second wave of work is more costly, not just in budget, but in lost momentum. The business falls into recovery mode trying to work in a new logo after having already made many decisions, both in terms of strategy and design, with the original logo having been a big limiting factor.

The flip side of this is so much more energizing and appealing to picture. Here are some benefits I think of right away when pairing a website redesign with a brand refresh:

• Getting all of the best brains together all at once
• Cost savings from 2-in-1 discovery phase
• Seeing new logo concepts mocked up on a website design gives you a chance to preview possible new directions to take 
• Minimizing the time needed to reconcile changing your brand across different marketing materials 
• Lessening the time where you have both old and new versions of the brand out there 
• Making it easier to coordinate all of your key stakeholders at once for major decisions and approvals 

Good News: A Full Brand Overhaul Probably Isn’t Necessary

Is it too much to tackle both brand and website at once? I get asked that a lot. Adding a brand refresh to a website redesign project doesn’t push the timeline out much farther. Sometimes it can even make the entire process take less time from start to finish. A brand refresh often brings more momentum to a website rebuild because the guardrails are lifted and there’s nothing holding the team back.

Rest assured that we rarely are scrapping everything and starting over from scratch. Most often, our team builds on what’s already successful for your brand. We can look at updating typography, refining the color palette, simplifying the logo, or clarifying your message. And if we’re already doing a deep dive into your content, layout, and strategy for the website, it just makes sense to tackle both at the same time. 

Revisiting a website can naturally push a company to think more critically about how it is showing up generally. Think of it this way–you’re halfway to clarifying your overall messaging if we’re already rewriting web copy. We’re already exploring a refreshed look and feel if we’re creating new website banners.  

And don’t worry, we will work with your team on the timeline and budget so the project moves at the right and continues to stay manageable all around. 

How Do You Know If You Need a Brand Refresh Alongside a Website Redesign?

The clearest signal that a brand refresh should be paired with a website redesign is if the catalyst to reaching out to a marketing agency for a website redesign was a fundamental shift in the target audience, services, positioning, or business model.

Here are some other common scenarios where it is usually works best to do both in tandem:

• You created your logo around the same time as your website, and haven’t touched it since.
• The original logo was scrappy and no longer reflects your current level of professionalism.
• Your business only has a logo and has no real consistent visual identity system (for exampl there are no image treatments or design elements like icons that represent your services).
• You’ve written and designed other new marketing materials, such as a sales deck, that don’t match your logo or tagline but feel more “right” for your business.

When a website, brand, and messaging evolve all together, it’s a thing of beauty. The strategy, visuals, process, and budget all benefit. The company comes out the other end with a stronger digital presence and your team gains a more effective tool to scale and grow the business with. 

Considering a Website Refresh?

My team and I would be happy to take a look and offer honest, low-pressure feedback on whether a simultaneous brand refresh is the right move for your business. No hard pitch, no commitment; just a conversation about where your company is and where it’s going.

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