What we talk about when we talk about luxury.
Luxury brand marketing is a vague concept when you stop to think about it. What does “luxury” even mean? How do you encapsulate it visually? More importantly, in this age of omnichannel branding, how do you convey the value of luxury through a digital experience?
When Bradley Wealth Management, a high-end boutique financial services firm, reached out to The James Agency to refine their brand’s visual and online identity, we took the time to evaluate what constituted a luxury brand experience, and more importantly, what did not.
You’re better off without:
Excess
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” is a principle to live by when it comes to luxury branding. White space is your savior, an economy of language keeps your core message clear and high-impact visuals convey the essence of your brand without the need for extra fluff.
Bradley Wealth Management’s original site was overwhelmed with content. Without a clear hierarchy of information, visitors had a hard time engaging with the website. One of the primary goals of the brand refresh was to create an online journey that conveyed the most important details right away in an easy-to-read and elegant manner.
Vagueness
Get specific. Dedicate time to understanding what the most critical elements of your brand are: if you had to boil your company down to five pillars, what would they be? Could they stand on their own? As tempting as it might be to lay out every detail of your organization’s operations on the homepage, highlighting a few crucial elements will perform measurably better than speaking generally about everything.
Bradley Wealth Management made it clear that their priority for the website was to offer the same quality of personalization as they do during their one-on-one consultations. Through goal-based planning, Bradley Wealth differentiates itself by encouraging the life aspirations of their clients. We translated those traits into an engaging web experience with messaging that focuses on the in-depth relationships their team cultivates amongst all their clients.
Inconsistency
“A brand is only as good as its execution across mediums.” Is that an adage? If not, it should be. Make sure you’re providing consistent touchpoints across all platforms so that no matter where potential clients pop up first, they’ll be sure to get an accurate impression.
We were tasked to create the graphic standards and web experience that became the paradigm for all iterations of the Bradley Wealth brand. By developing a clean, bold personality that could be replicated across multiple applications, we created a foundational aesthetic that would gain rapport with their user base.
However, don’t leave home without this:
Flow
A conversion website is essential to keep the user journey as fluid as possible. Eliminate all points of resistance or friction; get to the point and then get to the call to action. Every aspect of the experience should be relevant, and shouldn’t land the user in a dead end. By interlinking webpages and referencing different parts of the brand experience, you’re encouraging your consumer to self-direct through the journey you built for them.
For the web experience, we worked with Bradley Wealth Management to develop a clearly-defined sitemap that would seamlessly lead users from one page to the next, filling them in on all the need-to-know information without winding up stuck. Every page features a call to action that prompts the users toward signing up for the customized planning offered by their financial services team.
The more you know.
Luxury isn’t just in the looks, but looks matter; it’s not only in the sitemap, but content organization counts. There are various definitions of what comprises a truly high-end experience, but perhaps more important is understanding what to steer clear of in order to retain the respect of your consumers, both past and potential.
