Why Your Wellness Brand Looks Like Every Other Wellness Brand
Most health practices and nonprofits evaluate their brand by simply how it looks, whether they like the logo or if they like the colors. Those aren't the wrong questions to ask, but they aren't helpful to truly examining how well a brand works.
A brand works well when it helps the organization work well, such as attracting the right people, building trust, and helping future decisions align with the core mission. Doing those things has very little to do with how it looks to any one person.
In user experience (UX) design, this distinction is sometimes framed as the difference between aesthetic evaluation and heuristic evaluation; assessing a design not by whether it's looks good (subjectively), but by whether it meets the needs of the population using it. For health practices and nonprofits, the people using the brand are patients, donors, community members, and the internal staff.
Here are five questions that actually tell you whether your brand is working for all of them.s
1. Can a first-time visitor understand what you do and who you serve in under five seconds?
This is the foundational question in any user experience (UX) evaluation of a health or nonprofit website. Open your homepage, set a timer for five seconds, and read only what is visible without scrolling to answer this question: Can a visitor name your specialty, your patient or community, and your location within those five seconds alone?
This is the foundational question in any user experience (UX) evaluation of a health or nonprofit website. Open your homepage, set a timer for five seconds, and read only what is visible without scrolling to answer this question: Can a visitor name your specialty, your patient or community, and your location within those five seconds alone?
If the answer requires scrolling, your brand needs some work to answer those questions.
2. Is your brand consistent everywhere someone might find you?
Pull up your website, your Instagram, your most recent printed marketing materials, and your email signature at the same time.
Do they look like they came from the same organization? Do they have the same color palette, fonts, and tone of voice?
Inconsistency across different touchpoints is the most common sign that a brand is a collection of individual, disconnected decisions rather than a system. This translates into a disconnected message to your potential clients.
3. Is your brand attracting the right people, not just any people?
A successful brand not only communicates a message, but also generates awareness. Patients recognize themselves in it and donors feel like this is the kind of organization they want to support.
If you're regularly fielding inquiries from people who aren't a good fit, or struggling to attract the specific community you exist to serve, your brand may not be communicating specifically enough about who it's for.
4. Are brand decisions made consistently?
When a member of your team needs to create a new document, write a social media post, or design a flyer, do they know what fonts to use, what tone to write in, or what colors are correct?
If the answer is no, or not consistently, the brand is not documented in a way that ensures a consistent message.
It’s important that everyone who creates branded material follows the brand guidelines to ensure consistency no matter the application.
5. Does your brand work for you when you're not in the room?
A functioning brand represents the organization accurately without a thorough explanation. This shows up in the stack of brochures at a community event, or a shared social media post.
If your organization relies on personal relationships or verbal explanation to make the right impression, the brand is not working for you; you are still making the brand work.
What to do now
If you answered these five questions and found any gaps, it might seem like the next step is to conduct a rebrand, but that’s not necessarily correct. Many of these gaps can typically be solved by first reassessing the strategy: documenting what your brand is about, who it's for, and how it should be applied. Working on the visual brand comes after that to ensure that your brand stands on a firm foundation of strategy before applying the paint.
Take the next step
Want a starting point for evaluating your brand? Download the free Nonprofit Website Checklist, 10 diagnostic questions for health practices and nonprofits.
→ Get it free at wellfolkdesign.com/resources