How to Create a Scroll Stopping Brand Design

In a world where people are bombarded with different kinds of content, it has become difficult to get the attention of your target audience. If you want your brand to stand out, you need to put more effort into your brand design.

From your social media visuals to printed ads, you need to put more effort into creating bold, eye-catching and scroll-stopping designs for your brand. This article will guide you on making outstanding designs for your brand that will draw the attention of your target audience and help to futureproof your brand.

Tips For Creating a Scroll-Stopping Brand Design

If you want your audience to stop scrolling and notice your brand, here are tips on how to do that: 

Design with Your Audience in Mind

Whether you're creating ads or social media graphics, it's essential to have the end user in mind when designing. Ensure you have added photos that will capture the interest of your audience and elicit an emotional response. This will help grasp the attention of your audience and increase their chances of taking your desired actions. There are several steps that can help you better understand your audience. These are:

Creating a User’s Persona 

User personas are imaginary characters that represent your ideal customers and serve as a guideline for the kind of customers your company and brand are targeting. It enables you to feel empathy toward your ideal customers as you can understand their motivations, goals, and pain points. 

Conduct Market Research

You can collect great marketing data on your target customers, including your main competitors and industry trends. This data will help you identify areas where competitors aren't serving well, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents. You can also use the information to see the innovation opportunities. This can be an essential step in creating a sales funnel that converts.

Check your Client Base

Instead of guessing who your target audience is, why not take a look at the people you are currently working with? Consider their demographic data, including age, location, industry, and income levels. You can ask them what made them consider working with you to get a quick overview of your audience demographics.

Consider Current Habits

You can now dig deeper and consider the habits of your current customers. What information are they searching for? Are they using Apple or Android devices? Do they use computers or mobile devices? Which social media platforms do they hang out on? When you determine their location and the information they are searching for, it becomes easier to reach them.

Use Bold and Eye-catching Visuals

Getting your target audience to stop scrolling and notice your brand is an art. Due to the people demanding schedules, interruptions, and low attention spans, you only have a few seconds to catch their attention and stop them in their tracks. One of the most effective ways to do this is by using bold and eye-catching visuals, as these will help you make a lasting impact in the fast-paced social media environment. 

When using bold visuals, there are certain best practices you should remember:

• Align with your audience and brand identity. It can be helpful to use bold colors to show your brand identity. However, you must also ensure that these align with your target audience and brand personality. For instance, while a tech startup can benefit from using beautiful and trendy visuals, this approach may not be practical for an organic food brand. Instead, some natural and earthly tones may work better.
• Optimize for different gadgets. Nowadays, more people browse on mobile phones than on desktops, which is why it is necessary to optimize for various screen sizes. Use a responsive design whose layout, typography, and images will look great on smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
• Be consistent. Ensure consistency across all platforms, including social media pages, printed marketing materials, and the website, to maintain a unified brand presence. This level of cohesiveness can help to strengthen your brand identity. Therefore, maintain consistent colors, fonts, and design elements across different digital products. 
• A/B test. You might have the perfect visuals, but until you try them out and find out whether your target audience agrees, you won't know for sure. To address this challenge, you should A/B test your design to compare different CTA placements, color schemes, and images to determine which design yields the most engagement.
• Focus on usability. You might overemphasize bold visuals to the point where you compromise accessibility. Therefore, ensure that your texts are legible and that images have alt tags. By doing that, you can improve the user experience for your visitors.

Use the Correct Ratios of Images

People can forget what you tell them, but they are unlikely to forget what they see. That's why you need to choose something emotive, evocative, and dramatic. If the image has an unusual perspective or a strange composition, it is more likely to capture your audience’s attention. 

When creating some solid social media designs, there is no one-size-fits-all. You need to ensure that you use creative assets that are the right size for each platform. Here are the recommended image sizes for different platforms:

Facebook

If you are sharing your brand image on Facebook, you should consider the following specifications:

• Recommended size: 1080 by 1350 pixels.
• File type: JPG, GIF, and PNG.
• Maximum field size: 8 MB

X Image Size

X, formerly Twitter, allows users to add images to their posts. This should be in the following recommended image sizes:

• Minimum pixels: 600 x 335
• Square: 1080 by 1080 pixels
• Portraits: 1080 by 1350 pixels.

Instagram Image Size

With Instagram being a popular photo-sharing platform, it can be an excellent choice for showcasing your brand using features like the grid. Since the platform is highly visual, you need to use high-resolution visuals. For your feed and image guidelines, you can consider:

• Image size: 1080 by 1080 pixels.
• Minimum width of 1080 pixels
• Aspect ratios of 1:91:1
• File size of 8MB
• File type: PNG or JPG.

If you are running your ad across different platforms, ensure they are the correct size. Select the layout and components, such as square, horizontal, or landscape.

Leverage Color Psychology

The use of color for persuasion is one of the most effective strategies. Color psychology affects people’s behaviors and perceptions. It is a reflection of how colors affect the consumer's impression of a brand and how colors persuade consumers to choose one brand over another. 

A Management Decision report indicates that 90% of people make snap judgments based on color. That is why you should carefully consider your choice of color when creating a scroll-stop design. When leveraging color psychology, you need to research how different colors affect human emotions and behaviors. Color is particularly effective in:

• Evoking emotions. For instance, the color “Red” is effective in creating a sense of urgency and sophistication, which is why it is commonly used in sales signs. On the other hand, Blue is an excellent choice for building trust and creating a feeling of security. That’s why banks and lending apps commonly use it. The emotions triggered by the color will affect your audience’s decision, from their first impression to their long-term brand loyalty. 
• Influencing human behavior. You can use colors to subtly urge your target audience to take action. That’s why most CTAs are usually in bright orange or green colors as these colors are generally effective in encouraging purchases, clicks, and sign-ups. The color “Green” often gives an impression of a green light, while “Orange” frequently urges people to act fast. You can also use color to impact how long people stay on your site, their choice of products, or their confidence in checking out. 
• Enhance brand perception. You can use colors to project a particular image concerning your business and its product. Bright colors are perfect for projecting a fun and playful brand. On the other hand, deeper tones such as charcoal grey and dark blue are great for a sophisticated brand.
• Improve brand recognition. People often associate certain businesses with specific colors. For instance, Coca-Cola is associated with the color “Red” while Facebook is related to the color “Blue”. Barbie is associated with Pink, while Starbucks is associated with Green. The colors make the brand memorable in the minds of its audience. By using strong and consistent colors, you can make it easier for your target market to spot your brand. 
• Improve product perception. Colors not only make products more appealing, but they also encourage purchases. For instance, buyers are likely to perceive a green juice bottle as healthier. On the other hand, a beautiful laptop bag creates a luxurious look. With the choice of the right color and make, customers are more likely to buy your product. 

Create a Compelling Copy

A compelling copy should accompany a good design. Here are some tips on creating one:

• Create a sense of urgency. Adding a sense of urgency can help make your design more compelling. Use words such as “Don’t Miss Out” or “Order Now” to urge your audience to take action fast. This is why such phrases are prevalent on radio commercials. 
• Leverage data. Stats are very effective in urging people to take action on a compelling copy. This is often because people want to find out the percentage of individuals who share similar habits. When you use data, you encourage them to click, and at times, this is all you will ever need.
• Use customer reviews. This is one of the most effective ways of making your ad copy more persuasive. The good news is that it doesn't take a lot of effort. Therefore, leverage your current customers' reviews to boost your conversion rate.
• Make it scannable. With user attention decreasing across different platforms, people don’t have time to read lengthy texts. That is why it can be helpful to make your copy easy to scan. If you use a long paragraph, this will be an eyesore. Therefore, break it into small, scannable and digestible phrases.
• Be customer-centric. It can be tempting to brag about the achievements of your business., However, a more effective way to write a compelling copy is by focusing on the customer, telling them the problem you will solve for them and how you will make their life easier.
• Make it interesting. A good copy should use interesting words that focus on the story. The copy should be brief, concise, and clear. Ensure that the copy contains something that makes the reader want to continue reading to the end. This is one of the strategies for creating content that converts.
• Show empathy and offer a solution. A good copy should show empathy for the customer’s pain points. After that, it should show how your business can solve the problem. When doing that, avoid being too wordy.

In Conclusion, Keep Polishing and Perfecting

You can follow all the above steps to the letter. However, your target audience may have a different idea of what a good copy should look like. That is why the best way to create a scroll-stopping brand design is by experimenting with various designs and continually improving until you get it right. When you do that and combine it with the above tips, it's possible to create a stunning brand design that will make your audience stop scrolling.