10 Tips for Starting a Luxury Brand Website
Creating a website is never easy, but is creating a luxury brand website any different? Despite all the odds, and all the hardships the world has faced in recent years, the global luxury brand market worth is still growing. An increase from $309.6 billion in 2021 to $382.6 billion in 2025 is expected in the luxury market, and if you want a piece of that pie you will have to make sure your luxury brand website impeccably answers the aspirations of luxury consumers.
The concept of luxury has changed a lot through history and nowadays it seems to be more diverse than ever. The core values of luxury are still strongly associated with elegance, quality, and exclusivity, but the real drivers of today’s luxury consumer motivations have completely transformed. From using luxury brands to show off, prove superiority, or feel special, the contemporary consumer strives for personal fulfillment and access to one-of-a-kind experiences.
How do you translate this shift in the meaning of luxury when it comes to creating a luxury brand website? What separates a luxury brand from other high-quality brands? Is the sales and marketing strategy any different for luxury goods? These are the questions we’ll be dealing with in this article. Stay tuned to read more about:
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The online world is a place of abundance. There’s so much choice, so much creativity and so many opportunities with every click. As soon as you start exploring how to position your luxury brand online, the word “authenticity” pops up wherever you turn your head. But, is it even possible to produce anything authentic in a world that has so much to offer? The answer is, yes. Authenticity does not mean you need to be Nikola Tesla to produce something unique, it simply means staying true to your core values throughout every aspect of your online presence.
Authenticity does not guarantee that your website will not look a bit like some other websites in the same niche, but it does provide a framework that will help you stay consistent.
Consistency sends a strong message to your consumers, it tells them you are sure of your qualities, you know your worth and they can rely on you to provide them with all the benefits of using your brand as long as they use it.
Consistency and authenticity are the values of many quality brands, and although they are not enough to put a brand on a luxury map, they are surely the first steps to ensure you are on the right track. What’s also an integral part of a premium website is supreme usability. From a user’s point of view, it is not that much about providing spectacular visual performance as much as offering an intuitive, bespoke user experience.
What do authenticity, consistency, and supreme user experience mean in terms of luxury web design? Are there certain benchmarks that undoubtedly tell the consumer he has landed on a luxury brand website? There is no one simple answer to any of these questions, but there are many useful tips you can apply to ensure you create a luxury brand website well.
Knowing your target audience is essential in any niche, but you need to have a special understanding of the peculiarities of the luxury consumer. Without understanding the core needs underlying the behavior of the consumers in the luxury industry, you don’t have a ground for building your marketing and content strategy. While they come from all kinds of backgrounds and do all kinds of businesses, affluent consumers typically have these few traits in common:
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They are exquisitely successful at what they do, so logically they expect the same of you, or at least they need to see the same potential in your brand.
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They have a high appreciation of their time and tend to spend it carefully. This often applies to their finances too – they typically never question the price but they do question what they get for it. They expect a good return on investment in every sense.
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They are used to a high level of service and they pay attention to the tiniest details. They easily lose interest in those who can’t provide bespoke service.
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High-end consumers are often well educated and tend to have refined taste in all things related to culture – make sure you keep up with the social and fashion trends in your communication towards them and also in your overall performance. They need to feel like you come from their world, or at least as you belong in it.
If you want to keep a luxury consumer interested in what you’ve got to offer, you have to deliver more than just a great product/service – you have to design a complete experience. Luxury consumers are eager to explore who they can be, not just what they can do, therefore it is essential that you provide a whole concept, a story they can identify with, an experience that reflects who they are and want to be. Let’s see what we get when we translate these traits to their behavior on your website.
Premium consumers are technologically savvy. They will easily see through any negligence in terms of your website’s design and usability. Superior user experience is above all, highly intuitive. To create one, you really need to know your consumers’ needs, habits, and traits and be able to anticipate their behavior patterns on your pages.
Your first step in this regard implies thorough market research, consumer testing, and using all the tools that can help you get a clear picture of your target’s group expectations and online behavior. After you collect all the available data you can outline a customer journey on your site and create a detailed action plan. Don’t forget to check what the competition is doing because there may be some already established, typical patterns of doing specific things on a site that your consumers would expect from you too.
The things that you should never lose sight of are:
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Website loading speed – luxury brand websites use a lot of high-quality visual content that may take up a lot of space, so you should make sure your content doesn’t jeopardize your website performance.
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Security standards – don’t hesitate to state all the security measures that you take to protect your consumers’ ID and personal data.
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Mobile optimization – premium consumers also use their mobile devices a lot and expect a seamless user experience on every medium.
The first thing you’ll notice on a premium website is its sublime simplicity. Regardless of the complexity of service or product a brand has to offer, the biggest and the most striking difference is that those luxurious websites are amazingly simple. They use a lot of white space that creates a feeling of spaciousness on a page. The saying ‘less is more’ perfectly describes the idea behind this concept. Color schemes are also typically simple and focus on more subtle, muted tones rather than bright colors. You’ll never find a page cluttered with too many products or with too much content. The overall outlook of a premium website is clean and refined and the brand message is subtly incorporated throughout the whole experience. Pay attention to the visuals you use – they should also be consistent in terms of quality and style. Fonts are just as important and should match the style of the site.
Hermès, one of the leading luxury brands, managed to preserve its image and reputation without ever hiring a marketing department. A long-term, carefully crafted brand strategy was all that this famous company employed. As you have probably noticed, luxury brands do not bomb you with advertising messages.
The symbolic value of your brand should be just as strong if not even stronger than the actual value of the goods/services that you offer. Therefore, your marketing strategy should be focused on attracting people of influence who will then represent your brand better than any commercial.
In terms of website design, forget about catchy pop-ups, banners that cover the page, flashy CTAs, and anything that distracts the consumers from your content. That way you are showing you are confident in your brand and do not need to pressure consumers into doing anything other than what they want to do on your website. Not to mention that premium consumers often find aggressive advertising vulgar.
There’s nothing short-term about luxury, but a cerebral approach that takes into account brand image on every media is what truly makes a difference. Your brand’s social media accounts require special consideration. Since less is more in this department too, think thoroughly about which social media is the most suitable for your brand. There’s no need to put yourself out there on every available social media if your target group is mostly on Instagram. Or maybe, you can be on several social media but share specific, different, carefully curated media on each? Whichever approach you go for, your communication style should always be consistent with your brand values.
Connecting with luxury consumers on an emotional level is often a challenge as these people are usually highly accomplished individuals who do not carry their hearts on a sleeve. They are used to all kinds of privileges and they want to be distinguished from the rest, just as much as they want to belong to the clan of the special ones. Creating a sense of exclusivity by providing them with a members-only area on your website is a good way to meet their need for belonging while at the same time stating that they are special.
Exclusive content related to your brand, brand activism, and similar approaches that show that your brand stands for certain values is also a great way to leave an emotional link to your consumers.
The next step after you establish an emotional connection is to ensure a personalized experience for your consumers. You may offer tailor-made service, tailor-made products, or tailor-made experience on your website. That way you are showing the premium consumer that you know, understand, and respect their needs, and more importantly, that you are able to meet them.
True art is unique, authentic, impressive, and leaves no one indifferent. There’s something about it that makes you feel like you are in touch with something precious even when you don’t know much about it. Both of these descriptions can be applied to explain luxury. No wonder art and luxury so often go hand in hand. What does this mean in terms of your brand and your website? In case your brand isn’t already artistic by nature, finding a way to connect art and your brand will help you build an image more than any marketing strategy. Some brands like to use famous writer’s quotes to describe their brand, others employ respected artists to design for them. There are many ways art can help you convey your brand message in a natural, impactful manner. By analyzing your core brand values, your niche, your consumer’s interests you will be able to find the artistic expression that answers your needs best.
Minimalism, clean design, simplicity, and refined color scheme can look incredibly different in different WordPress themes. There’s a thin line that separates simplicity and lack of imagination, make sure you don’t cross it. Small details, like an animated cursor, hover-over effect, icons, animated text effects, and similar design tricks can totally change the feel of a website. Browse luxury brand websites that you admire, create a collection of your top choices, and notice what is it about them that appeals to you and that makes them unique. That is the easiest way to learn what luxury design looks and feels like.
The luxury industry has long been fueled by emotion. Regardless of the niche, luxury consumers tend to base their decisions not just on the price but more on abstract values incorporated in complex concepts of self-actualization, identity, and higher ideals. Brands that communicate a sense of purpose beyond a product are the brands that earn the prestigious epithet of luxury. The quality of the product and service is not nearly enough to put a brand on the luxury map.
Being able to constantly deliver on the brand’s promise is of crucial importance. The online space as well as the developments in technology allow for a lot of creativity and provide you with many different ways to design a supreme user experience and establish your brand as luxurious from the very start. The more effort you invest in getting to know and understand your consumers the easier it will be for you to create a website that will cater to their interests. And, after all, prepare yourself for a marathon, establishing a luxury brand takes time and leaves no room for rookie mistakes.
