Rebranding is one of the most important business decision making, and often one of the most daunting ones. You can make or break your rebranded product or service simply by doing rebranding the wrong way.

The rebranding process itself is simple – If you felt that your company or product/service’s logo is boring and no longer translates your vision as effective as before, you might benefit greatly from rebranding; If you felt that your business website is awful, you might want to redesign and rebrand yours.

Rebranding is not all about changing your design

The most important first step in rebranding is, well, taking the first step itself, never mind the criticism you might receive by doing so.

Many small business owners are afraid that rebranding will damage their business. Worse, they don’t know where to start. Even more worse, some small business owners think that rebranding is all about the cosmetics: The company’s logo, company colour scheme, and other physical appearance of your business.

How to rebrand like a pro: Sitepoint case study

One case study to better describe how successful rebranding takes form is the recent rebranding of Sitepoint Marketplace.

Sitepoint is one of the authoritative voices in web designing and developing. Their online references, forums and buy and sell websites marketplace are great resources for people who make a living through web presences. Their marketplace, however, is different in a sense that it has grown beyond the scope of web designing and developing.

Due to this, there is one logical solution: Rebrand the sub-domain site into a stand-alone online marketplace, taking “Sitepoint” off their name, and build a new brand name “Flippa” from zero.

Not your typical rebranding through design revamp, Sitepoint Marketplace spin its buy-and-sell websites name into Flippa, while keeping the former Marketplace as Sitepoint Classifieds.

Splitting the Marketplace is very smart business decision – Sitepoint is a web designers and developers site, after all. They keep the Marketplace for Sitepoint Classifieds, listing designer-for-hires, content-for-sales, template-for-sales, and other related listings. This will strengthen and laser-target Sitepoint branding.

As of Flippa (Flippa.com), the buy and sell section of the Marketplace has grown to a point that it needs its own brand and domain name. Flippa, sports a Web 2.0. look, is offering more information that can be accessed from the listing pages without the need to go deep into listing detail pages. This is a major feature for seasoned website flippers that can help them save time while exploring more.

All in all, this rebranding strategy of Sitepoint is a calculated-risk decision making. All I can foresee is positive outcome out of this major restructuring.

Ivan Widjaya
Business rebranding

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