There have been times in my work career when a software feature/solution comes up in conversation multiple times within a short period of time. When this happens, it makes me stop and think as if the event itself is raising a hand to get my attention. Pay attention, this is an important concept. Learn from it!
This happened to me recently with the ability to co-brand a website with client branding. One of the websites I manage is a B2B website that provides financial services to consumers on behalf of banks and credit unions. It’s a single set of code that is used to service multiple clients. Distinct branding is supported at the individual client level because the site supports a style sheet for each client.
There’s nothing fancy or complicated about that. But it is a big feature in the B2B space where clients want to maintain and front their brand to the consumers. It’s come up several times over the years as a competitive advantage in the marketplace for my company. When the feature is enabled, it maps the official logo, color palette, and fonts of our client into the base template of our site to create a near seamless transition from the client site. I call it co-branding instead of private label because there are a few minor elements where my company name shows (privacy link, contact us, etc.)
After a few recent implementations, the topic came up again this week while I was talking shop with a former colleague about his work in a different industry. His boss didn’t think they could use the build-it-once and brand model to get scalability from a single site. The boss thought that each client would require their own custom solution. So my friend showed him a live client implementation of a co-branded bank site as a way to explain the client branding approach. His point was that in a B2B model where the client outsources the operations of the business function, that the client is more accepting of the solution when they see the branding. It acts and feels like an extension of their site.
At the end of the day how you accomplish this is a technical decision. But if you work in the B2B space and service consumers for your clients, then make it a priority to support customer branding for each client.