Why user experience is the new touchstone for branding?

User experience (UX) defines the way of interaction between customers and the brand. UX is potent to decide whether the customers want to keep interacting with the brand in future and thus helps in refining of the brand. 

 Branding needs perspective of how the onlookers want it to be. Nowadays, customers have more touchpoints with brands than evermore, they have a more outstanding selection of products to choose from. This explains the fact that brand is not just a logo or a image, it is more about the consumers' experiences and their unbiased interactions.

BRAND

Brand represents the intellectual and emotional relations that people develop with a company, product or person. It's like people getting obsessed to a particular brand because of their actions and visuals. Branding is based on a strategy that purely represents interactions with the customers.

This can be simply explained as the way a company looks, talks and behaves, all contributes to the way its brand is seen by the customers. Taking an analogy, a child's behaviour is judged by his parents actions and image in the society. 

Just by considering some stats, one can definitely find out the popularity of some decent brands and can also analyze the weaknesses of some underrated brands.  

The obvious FACTORS 

The Users or the customers analyze any brand on mainly three factors- their Actions, Tone and Visuals. 

• ACTIONS

People want to know what the company has done and will be doing to spotlight certain issues which needs to be addressed. As an instance, an automobile company with a very famous brand added a specialized function in their products to minimize the pollution and to use the minimal of resources or even in case of a popular clothing brand, setting up their merchandise to collect money for donations to NGO'S or old age homes. These actions are taken in account while discussing the merit points of brands. 

• TONE 

How a person speaks, represents his personality. This life principle is equally applicable for a brand too. This is all about how the brand communicates and it includes everything from texts on websites to verbal promotions to even the behaviour of staff with customers. There is for sure some digital influence like the marketing campaigns and the social media influence.

• VISUALS 

When you think about brands, here comes the thought of promotional videos, the brand ambassadors, a catchy logo and some signature thoughts. Everyone has seen a dozen of promotional and descriptive videos of certain brands at almost all the social media platforms but like only some of them. What do you think the criteria for judging them is? Well, there are some criterias. Firstly and most importantly, an important and known face whether of a social media influence, an actor, a singer, a sportsperson or even a public speaker. It is  basically a smart play with the human physcology. Secondly, customers really want a small play to describe a brand rather just a straight script description. More of visuals and highlights and less of a speech is the best format.

ABOUT THE VALUES AND IDENTITY 

Now, to talk about quality of brand- 'Brand Values' is one of the basic and important element for User Experience UX. "A brand needs to be expressed." Simply to combine all the ideas for design and forming a concrete understanding of what the brand is, what it aims to accomplish and what it is really based on. In the beginning, it is never easy to create a face for a brand, it needs an ideology, perspectives and opinions. Come to think of an brand Dior, Gucci, Bulgari or any other world famous brand, you will be instantly directed towards their top notch work and their ideology. But it was never easy to create such a face. They need to firstly create a logo or image for the brand, then the products and the ideology they are going to pursue. Use experience shapes and explains how the brand is viewed and interacted with the customers. This identity can be created by design elements like logos, colors, layouts, infographics, images, marketing video, media content and even the social media content. Users find their trust and engagement with a brand through these visual identities. 

CONCLUSION 

User experience really feels like a marketing strategy but this is much more than just a strategy. It is an emotional and sincere attachment of people with a brand based on their overall performance. This is not just competition but a mutual agreement, people judge and give their remarks about a brand and they try to improve and try to create a much more creative platform.