It’s rare to see a brand with any amount of longevity have the same aesthetics, message or style as when it entered the marketplace. Like most things in life, brands evolve over time, reflecting the changing needs and desires of their client base. This is even true for colossal brands like Facebook, Amazon and Google, among other brands – Elite Daily compiled a list of websites that look markedly different than their current iteration.
Such drastic changes take place naturally over a brand’s lifespan, but the biggest takeaway is that a brand is never a final product and is often rolled out in phases – ten fantastic ideas executed poorly are inferior to two or three ideas executed perfectly.
In the information technology space, this process is called “phased adoption,” the idea of rolling out software or hardware in stages to help users adapt to changes more easily and to ensure all components of a stage work properly before moving on to the next piece.
Building your brand is a lot like a software rollout – your clients are going to accept change or new features more readily when they occur incrementally and are proven to work without drastically altering how a certain component functions. For example, a rebranded website with a clunky interface and poor searchability will result in a disgruntled customer base that may turn elsewhere if the changes are egregious enough.
People don’t hate change – they hate changing the way they interact with something as the result of a poorly-planned rollout strategy. Before you implement a new idea, ask yourself two questions:
1. How will this affect my customer’s ability to interact with my product or brand?
2. Is this occurring at an appropriate point in my phased adoption process?
If you can answer those two questions honestly, on behalf of your customers – the people supporting you – then you’ve got the green light to proceed.
