Welcome to part two of our blog series, “Everything You Need to Know to Start an eCommerce Business”. In our first blog we covered how to find your market niche and how to determine which product you should be selling. Today, we’ll be covering branding. When talking about branding, two essential things we must consider are your brand name and your brand logo.

You may think creating a brand is just as simple as creating those two things, however when it comes to branding, colour theory, a customer avatar and word choice longevity all play a part in how a company should brand their product. Let’s dive in.

• What Is Your Customer's Avatar and Your Company's Archetype?

Before you set out to create your brand in any sort of way one of the most important things you must do is create your customer’s avatar. If you have been following this blog series then you would have already established what type of customer you will be targeting while you were researching about the potential product you should sell. If you haven’t done that yet, we recommend doing that before moving forward. 

To learn more about your potential customer base you can use resources such as facebook pages,  case studies on the industry and one on one conversations to develop the “avatar” of the type of customer you are trying to target.

After you have established who you’re trying to target, use that information to determine what brand archetype would work best for the type of product you’re selling and the type of customers that will be buying it. 

There are the 12 kinds of brand archetypes:

1. The Magician: Makes dreams come true
2. The Sage : Is always seeking the truth
3. The Innocent : Just wants to be happy 
4. The Outlaw :  Seeks revolution
5. The Jester: Lives in the moment
6. The Lover: Makes you theirs
7. The Explorer : Breaks free
8. The Ruler: Wants absolute power
9. The Caregiver: Nurtures you
10. The Hero : Wants to prove himself
11. The Regular Guy/Girl: Wants to belong
12. The Creator: Craves perfection

• Decide Your Brand Name 

Now that you’ve understood what type of customer you’re trying to target and what you want your archetype to be, you can start to think about how you can communicate the feeling you would like your customers to feel.

 Let’s take the example of selling custom made football knee pads. The knee pads are for leisure but they are still going to be used for sports. For the archetype you could maybe opt for the magician, jester or hero. What your archetype should be is dependent on the customers you will be targeting but you need to keep the “feeling” of the archetype in mind when deciding your brand name.

After this process is complete you can start to brainstorm simple brand name ideas with word association, you can also use resources like Shopify Business Name Generator, Name Mesh or Wordoid to help you decide on a name. Last but not least,  make sure that you can buy a domain related to your brand name!

• Research Colour Theory and Get Your Logo Created

Colours play an important association for consumers on how they perceive a brand. Once you have decided your brand name you can start looking at the colours you think would best represent your brand. 

There are three colour schemes you can work with; complementary, analogous and triadic. What colour scheme you go for is up to you however, the connotation of the colours is something you must keep in mind as you are deciding what your logo will look like.

Here is a general description of what each colour can represent :

1. Red: Passion, Love, Anger
2. Orange: Energy, Happiness, Vitality
3. Yellow: Happiness, Hope, Deceit
4. Green: New Beginnings, Abundance, Nature
5. Blue: Calm, Responsible, Sadness
6. Purple: Creativity, Royalty, Wealth
7. Black: Mystery, Elegance, Evil
8. Gray: Moody, Conservative, Formality
9. White: Purity, Cleanliness, Virtue
10. Brown: Nature, Wholesomeness, Dependability
11. Tan or Beige: Conservative, Piety, Dull
12. Cream or Ivory: Calm, Elegant, Purity

After you’ve decided what colours you’d like to use for your logo you can start looking at the types of logos that would work best for your business. Here’s a list of the types of logo you can create:

1. Abstract Mark
2. Mascot Logo
3. Combination Mark
4. Emblem Logo
5. Lettermark
6. Pictorial Mark
7. Wordmark

You have your colours and know the type of logo you want, you can go to websites like 99designs to get it designed and created or you can also use Fiverr, which has a ton of options and variety of designers for any price range.

And that's it, you will now have your brand name and logo! In the next blog, we will be discussing how to buy a domain and how to choose your hosting provider.