Can an App Shift Brand Perception?

Q&A: Can an app (or portal) shift how users see our brand?

There’s one question that I inwardly cheer every time I hear it from a CEO, CTO or CMO. It doesn’t happen all that often. It requires a particular kind of thinker. And yet when it does, I know we’re going to do something special together. 

Can an app shift how people see our brand?

The answer is, yes it can, and this is one of the smartest and highest-return uses of technology. But it’s not without challenge. This reminds me a bit of college. It’s a clean slate, and you can reinvent your image. An app or software isn’t quite as clean of a slate, as the user likely has some previous impressions, but the consistency and number of touches associated with software create a great opportunity to enhance or even override a previous impression.

Let’s dive in.

Do you know how you want your brand to be seen?

It’s not enough to know that you want to shift brand perception in a positive direction. What specifically does that mean in the context of your brand? There are often competing attributes. Is it better to be perceived as high end or down-to-earth? Compassionate or snarky? Cutting-edge cool or steady and comforting?

Notice that each of the previously listed attributes is positive to some, and yet you probably can’t successfully convince someone that your brand represents them all. There are tradeoffs. So, what’s most important?

The best way to find the emotion that will move the needle is to think about your user. What do they want? We work in highly regulated environments like insurance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Users in those high-stakes environments normally want to feel safe and confident. A user starting a workout program may want to feel healthier. A user working through a finance app may want to feel more secure in their finances.

This becomes the foundation of your efforts. Atop that foundation, you will build more specific efforts to nurture certain feelings in high-intensity scenarios.

Do you make it about the user? 

The trick to any perception campaign is to remember that everyone is the star of their own little movie. Your brand is not the main character in your user’s movie. If you do things right, you play a supporting role. In order to make the user feel a specific way about your brand, the brand must make them feel that way about themselves. For example, if you want the user to trust your brand, help them trust themselves more. 

This is even more important if trust is an uphill battle in your industry. Users often feel mistrustful when they perceive themselves to be disadvantaged compared to the brand. For example, users may mistrust a health insurance company if they don’t understand how their insurance works. In the case of brand relationships, ignorance may not be bliss.

To change this, reduce the (real or perceived) disadvantage. For example, to make health insurance users trust your brand more, make them feel smarter when it comes to their insurance. This levels the playing field, and allows them to trust the brand more.

The trouble is, creating a direct education campaign can backfire. “Acme Co. University”-type features only work when the user doesn’t feel stupid for needing to be educated. It may be demoralizing for an adult who’s had insurance for 30 years to admit to themselves that they need a “university” experience to understand their insurance. But there are other, more subtle ways to both empower and educate the user, such as micro-educational interactions sprinkled at key moments throughout the experience. The implementation of this can be nuanced, so if you’d like help applying it to your situation, that’s what we do. Drop us a line.

Are you capitalizing on the moments that matter?

You can’t possibly optimize every app or platform interaction, and you don’t need to. You want to consider the highest-stakes interactions and put your effort into those.

What many organizations get wrong about this is the framing. They assume the interactions that have the highest impact for the organization also have the highest stakes for the user. For example, they may focus on account level changes–renewals, upgrades, or cancellations. But there are sneaky connection points that may not read as important at all from the organization level, but are critical to the user: logging in for the first time in a long time, trying to access a critical document, or trying to change a payment method.

These moments can be amplified by ambient conditions: if the user is stressed out by events outside of their control. For example, a common reason a user needs to change their email is due to either changing employment (stressful) or being locked out of their email due to hacking (also stressful). While an email change itself may seem mundane, the circumstances surrounding it make it high stakes for the user.

There are also positive moments that matter. Consider a user hitting a financial goal. This might be arbitrary from the brand’s standpoint, but deeply meaningful to the user. These are key opportunities for the app to position your brand on the same side as the user: shielding them in stressful moments, and amplifying in celebratory moments.

Does your platform’s look and feel send the right message?

This can be a tough one, because most users won’t tell you if your platform is ugly. But deep down, you know if you feel excited and proud to show it off, or if you start every demo with a half-apologetic mention that it was built several years ago and most users don’t log in all that often and it’s built on top of an older system but it’s really functional…

The truth is that tech is not like fashion—outdated design doesn’t turn into vintage cool. Your platform’s look and feel will only deteriorate over time. Products with significant effort put into the look and feel up front tend to age more gracefully, but they still require upkeep to look fresh even if the bones are good. This realization might chafe a little, if you have a function-first mentality. But users see your platform’s appearance more than they do its inner workings. If it looks good, they’ll assume it works well.

I was once giving a technical due diligence demo on behalf of a client that I’d spent a lot of time prepping for. The interviewer was associated with a prominent VC firm and I deeply wanted to make a good impression. I had a laundry list of highly technical proof points that I was ready to show him, but he requested a tour of the live software first. About ⅔ of the way through the tour, he stopped me and told me he’d seen enough: he was ready to report that the product was well-developed, mature and ready for investment. 

I hadn’t even gotten to the technical stuff yet.

What happened? He liked the way it looked. Sophisticated but clean layouts, intuitive interactions, even some useful animations – it all contributed to the impression that this product was ready for prime time. 

If a technical due diligence evaluator for a well-regarded VC firm is swayed that much by look and feel, imagine how much influence it holds over your users. 

Are you using familiarity to your advantage?

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s also a useful tool to generate credibility when used sparingly and skillfully. While users will quickly sniff out a cheap fake, using select familiar patterns from trusted experiences can help to create a feeling of security and confidence for users.

Early tabbed interfaces were an example of this - they imitated the familiar ‘file folder’ look to help users understand that tabs separated information into buckets, just like file folders. You can borrow from the physical world, other industries, or even other apps.

The caveat to this technique is that you must execute as well or better than the reference app, or you’re likely to have the opposite effect. If your experience compares unfavorably to the original, it’s an immediate detractor to credibility rather than an enhancement.

A small example of an interaction that’s hurt by looking like a well-liked counterpart is one of those websites that have a ‘Chat with an agent’ button that doesn’t actually connect you with anyone. You sit there waiting for the system to find someone, wondering what will happen if you close the window. Is your message gone? Is it secure? You eventually give up, and by the time someone finally sends you an email 6 hours later, you’re annoyed and have lost a bit of confidence in the organization. When you fill out a contact form intending to send an email, that feels like a standard business experience. When you open a chat interface and are ultimately relegated to email hours later, that feels a tad misleading. 

The bottom line

Shifting brand perception through tech isn't just possible—it's one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. But it requires intention. You need to know exactly how you want to be seen, make every interaction about empowering your users rather than showcasing yourself, and focus your energy on the moments that truly matter to them.

The good news? You don't need to be perfect everywhere. You need to be thoughtful where it counts: in those high-stakes moments when users are stressed or celebrating, in the look and feel that creates their first and lasting impression, and in the familiar patterns that help them feel confident and secure.

Your app touches users more consistently than almost any other brand touchpoint. That repetition is your opportunity. Use it wisely, and you won't just shift perception—you'll fundamentally change how people experience your brand.