Did you know that 63% of consumers initial their shopping journey online? This means no matter if a person ends up in an online store or a brick-and-mortar, they’re very likely to find what they want to buy via a digital medium. That’s why an online presence plays a pivotal role for a business. With a strong online presence, businesses can reach out to more customers, and deliver a better overall buying experience. Online presence refers to all information and activities that a business has on the Internet. These include official websites, social media accounts, customer reviews, YouTube videos, Quora answers, Reddit discussions, basically everything related to a brand that customers can find online. For small businesses, whose resources are limited, having a strong online presence is even more crucial. Meanwhile, a strong online presence can make a business more approachable, using relatively low resources. With an effective digital strategy, higher ROI for a business.

Brand guidelines, or brand style guides, are a set of rules that help businesses communicate their brand efficiently. Brand guidelines should indicate a brand’s fonts, color palette, logo, voice and tone, mission, core value, etc. Take a look at Apple’s Identity Guidelines , an excellent example of brand guidelines. The guidelines even state how a merch or email signature must look like. For a business, one of the reasons why brand guidelines are important is because it maintains a brand’s consistency. According to a Lucidpress survey in 2019, a brand with consistent presentation across all channels witnessed a 33% increase in revenue than brands that didn’t. Impressive, right? Then, how do brand guidelines create this consistency? Well, it makes sure all content, images are generated following exactly how they should be. No matter if that is a 10+ senior designer or an intern, with the help of these documents, they will know what to do and what not to do so that the brand image doesn’t change. As a result, customers will remember the brand and the feeling attached to it.