A landing page is the first point of contact on the web. They should be informative and tell users of the brands story and purpose.
We took a look at registering a domain name, whilst we wont be doing this for our current projects we are taking a look at it for future reference. Registering a domain name allows us to gain ownership of a domain and therefore secure a suitable domain, which aids in brand strength and notability.
Seeing as the web has become so popular it can be quite difficult to find the perfect domain as it has probably been taken by someone else. This means people tend to get quite creative when establishing a domain, typically with naming conventions. As you can see if I were to find a domain for my bank brand spire.co.uk has been taken but spire.international has been suggested as a good alternative.
We had a look at trademark classes and explored how we establish a trademark class. Initially it is a good idea to check if your brand name has been used by another brand in a similar class as your brand.
Search UK trade mark classes by word or phrase – Search UK trade mark classes – GOV.UK
I took a look at my own bank brand in this search and it was being used by 9 different companies but none in regards to financial services or banking so if I were creating a real brand, I would be okay to go ahead and use Spire as a name.
A good place to start when creating a landing page, is to establish a USP, unique selling point, what problems are we trying to solve? A USP paired with a mission statement will give users a good insight as what to expect from the brand. Content derived during brand development should be included here, fifth elements and chosen colours should be featured here to establish the brands identity. Including the brands tone of voice when partnered with the design elements should help tie together the brands identity.
Below you can see Lloyds’ landing page.
We had a guest speaker come in today from an agency called Niice. Niice specialise in creating brand guidelines for companies. They have worked with the likes of Paramount, Playstation and Fox Entertainment. Chris offered a really unique perspective and I never knew such organisations existed, solely providing bigger organisations with brand guidelines. I have a new appreciation for the importance of brand guidelines and Chris discussed creative ways to approach creating brand guidelines beyond PDF’s that I feel I may attempt within my own project.