How can brands differentiate themselves while remaining intuitive and familiar to consumers?   Are your car, phone, or shoes an outward sign of your personality? What is leading to the trend of odd-ball, zany web designs? 

Different but Familiar

• When it comes to experiencing a brand, the desire for something more than utilitarian varies from person to person
• “You're expecting certain types of content to be delivered in a specific way. And that's part of the attraction is for it to be this really intuitive, familiar experience. So I sort of put that to the side and think about DTC sites and retailer sites as having a lot more scope for variation and a different experience.” - Kiri Masters
• “There needs to be a balance between solving the homogenization issue and solving the problem of differentiation or distinction, and still being able to be intuitive, still being able to get your consumer to do the flow {from discory to checkout}.” - Roger Figeuiredo
• “It's really tough to stand out but not stand out so far that you're doing something unintuitive.” - Ben Marks
• “That discovery and awareness stage of the funnel is where there's a real opportunity to be different. And after that, you kind of want to bring it back to what's normal.” - Kiri Masters
• Maybe visual design inspiration coming from some of the same places contributes to such boredom online because too many brands are overusing trends rather than being original
• “You build your mood board, and you're going to go to other brands and you build your mood board off of other brands, and naturally is just going to lead to more of the same.” - Roger Figeuiredo
• “When you're building your mood board for the look and feel, maybe don't go look at other brands. Look for analogies in design. Then build your mood board off of things that are maybe real life stuff instead of other websites.” - Roger Figeuiredo
• “Don't do what your competitors, people in your category are doing, do things differently from the start. And you will be more likely to have a less boring, homogenized experience.” - Ben Marks
• Has Shopify both helped and harmed the growth of eCommerce? Helped by democritizing, removing the barrier of entry, but also harmed by too many template based sites, and also flooding the market with more competitors

Guests

• Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia
• Roger Figueiredo, VP of Marketing at #paid
• Ben Marks, Director of Global Market Development at Shopware

Associated Links:

• The Visions Report is a 100-page report with deep insights, created by Future Commerce.

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