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Branding for e-shops: how Dabur's brand refresh shows steps towards trust, better conversion and a more consistent customer experience.
Branding is not just a new logo, a cleaner font or a modern color on the packaging. It is the way a business makes the customer understand who it is, why it exists and why it is worth trusting before they press the “buy” button. The example of Dabur, as presented by Design Week through the brand refresh undertaken by London agency bluemarlin, is particularly useful for every e-commerce owner, because it concerns a classic challenge: how do you renew a brand with a long history without losing the authenticity that made it famous. That is why branding for e-shops should be treated as a trust strategy and not as a simple aesthetic change.
Dabur is one of the most recognizable heritage brands in India, with roots in Ayurveda, everyday consumer products and a presence in categories such as personal care, health care and food. Bluemarlin’s work was not limited to an aesthetic refresh. According to Design Week, the goal was to create a more coherent and modern brand identity that could work across multiple markets, products and consumer touchpoints. For a e-shop, this logic is crucial: the customer may learn about the brand from a Google Shopping result, compare it on a marketplace, visit the product page, see an Instagram ad, and ultimately purchase from mobile. If the visual identity, product storytelling, and brand promise are not consistent across all of these points, trust is diminished.
The important lesson from the Dabur case is that rebranding should not be seen as a “change of image”, but as a commercial strategy. A brand refresh makes sense when it clarifies the brand’s position in the market, makes the choice easier for the customer and improves recognition on digital channels. This is even more true in e-commerce, where the competition appears next to you in real time and the purchase decision is influenced by image, information, reliability, speed and consistency.
Many e-shop owners first invest in performance marketing, SEO, promotions and automation platforms. All of these are necessary, but without strong branding they often act as “rented attention”: they bring traffic, but they don’t necessarily build preference. When two products have a similar price, similar features and similar delivery time, the customer chooses the one that seems more reliable, clearer and closer to their needs. This is where the real power of brand strategy appears.
In e-commerce branding, brand image affects three key points: click-through rate in campaigns and organic results, conversion rate on product pages, and likelihood of repurchase. A consistent brand identity helps the user quickly recognize the business, while the right packaging design acts as “physical proof” of the promise made online. If the box, label, thank-you note, and unboxing experience do not match the image of the site, the customer feels inconsistency. On the contrary, when everything is aligned, the brand gains memory.
The growth of e-commerce makes this consequence even more important. As the market grows, so does the number of brands vying for the same attention. The graph below shows the estimated growth in global retail e-commerce sales, which explains why branding differentiation is now becoming a core competitive advantage and not a “nice to have”.
Source: eMarketer / Insider Intelligence, estimates of global retail ecommerce sales
In this environment, branding acts as a selection filter. It is not enough to have a nice product. You need to clearly explain what it represents, who it is aimed at and why the customer should feel safe with you. This is exactly what the example of Dabur shows: a historic brand did not throw away its heritage, but organized it in a more modern way so that it remains relevant to new generations of consumers.
Trust is one of the most underrated factors in e-commerce sales. The Baymard Institute, which systematically analyzes checkout usability, records that the average cart abandonment rate remains particularly high, at around 70%. The reasons are not only operational, such as shipping or mandatory account creation. They also include issues of perceived reliability, such as the user's doubt about whether they can trust the site with their card details. In other words, brand trust directly affects the checkout.
As the chart below shows, the top reasons for cart abandonment are related to cost, experience barriers, and trust. For an e-commerce owner, this means that rebranding or brand refresh shouldn’t be limited to the homepage. It should extend to shipping messages, trust badges, returns policies, the checkout page, and the tone of voice of transactional emails.
Source: Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Research
McKinsey’s data on personalization reinforces the same picture. Consumers expect brands to recognize them, speak to them with relevance, and offer experiences tailored to their context. This doesn’t just mean putting the customer’s first name in an email. It means having a clean product architecture, proper categorization, a consistent style, meaningful product propositions, and content that reduces pre-purchase hesitation.
Source: McKinsey & Company, Next in Personalization 2021
On a practical level, customer experience is not separate from branding. It is the application of branding to reality. If the brand promises naturalness, but the product page is full of vague claims, the experience is ruined. If it promises premium quality, but the photos are low-resolution, the message is nullified. If it promises speed, but the checkout has many steps, the promise is not confirmed. Brand consistency is, ultimately, the gap between what you say and what the customer experiences.
A proper brand refresh starts with diagnosis, not design. The first step is a brand audit. Gather all touchpoints: logo, colors, product pages, email templates, packaging, social posts, ads, banners, marketplace listings, invoices, return forms, and customer support scripts. Then evaluate whether they all tell the same story. If the site looks premium, but the emails look sketchy, you have a lack of consistency. If product photos change style by category, you have a visual identity problem. If the descriptions are technical but your audience needs guidance, you have a product storytelling problem.
The second step is customer research. Talk to people who bought, people who abandoned their cart, and people who chose a competitor. Ask what they understood about the brand, what made them trust or hesitate, what information was missing, and what image they were left with. Analytics show what happened, but customers explain why it happened. At this stage, it’s worth examining reviews, customer support tickets, and social media questions. Often, that’s where the real customer language is hidden.
The third step is to formulate a brand strategy. Clearly define positioning, audience, core promise, values, reasons to believe and brand personality. For example, an e-shop with clean beauty products needs a different style, a technology store another and a brand with traditional foods another. The case of Dabur shows that when there is heritage, you don't need to hide it to look modern. You need to translate it into clean, contemporary language.
The fourth step is the identity system. This is where logo, typography, color palette, photographic style, illustration, icons, packaging design and UI rules come in. The difference between simple design and organized branding is that the latter works as a system. You don’t decide from the beginning what a banner or product card will look like every time. You have rules that allow for speed, consistency and recognition.
The fifth step is to implement it in the conversion journey. Start with the pages with the greatest commercial impact: homepage, category pages, product pages, cart, checkout, post-purchase emails and packaging. If the brand needs a total digital refresh, the website construction should follow the same identity rules. Check if product titles are understandable, if photos answer key questions, if benefits appear before technical features, if there are trust signals near the CTA, and if shipping and return policies are simple. In projects e-shop construction, these points should be designed together with the UX and brand system. Conversion rate improves when uncertainty is reduced.
Step six is the rollout. Don’t change everything without a plan. Inform the team, prepare templates, create brand guidelines and make a gradual transition across channels. If you have loyal customers, explain the change honestly. A good brand refresh should not make the customer wonder “is it the same company?”, but feel “the company I know has become cleaner, more modern and easier to use”.
The biggest opportunity for most e-shops lies on product pages. That’s where branding meets commercial decision. A good product page should answer four questions: what is it, why does it matter to me, why should I believe it, and what should I do next. Brand identity should support these answers, not embellish them. For FMCG branding products, like Dabur’s case, packaging plays a huge role because the product can appear both on a physical shelf and on a digital product card. This means that the packaging should be easy to read at a small size, clearly indicate the category, and convey the key benefit without visual noise.
In omnichannel presence, consistency is even more demanding. The same brand can appear on Skroutz, Google Ads, TikTok, newsletter, physical store, shipping packaging and customer support. If each channel has a different style, the customer does not build a consistent image. Conversely, when the language, visuals and promises remain consistent, the brand becomes more easily recognizable and more difficult to replace by a lower-priced competitor.
Customer experience is a measurable business driver. PwC has recorded that 731% of consumers consider experience to be an important factor in purchasing decisions, while 321% say they would walk away from a brand they love after a bad experience. The chart below shows why the details of the brand experience, from speed to courtesy to convenience, are not secondary.
Source: PwC, Future of Customer Experience Survey
Branding requires creativity, but its success must be measured. Before embarking on a rebranding or brand refresh, keep a baseline for branded searches, direct traffic, conversion rate, add-to-cart rate, checkout completion, repeat purchase rate, email click-through rate, average order value, returns, and NPS. After implementation, don’t expect to draw conclusions in a week. Monitor trends for 60 to 90 days, taking into account seasonality, campaigns, and price changes.
Special attention needs to be paid to quality signs. Have customers searching for the brand name increased? Have support questions for basic information decreased? Have reviews referring to trust, packaging or ease of use improved? Have email flows become more effective because the message is clearer? These data show whether branding works not only as an image, but as a mechanism of understanding.
The Dabur example is valuable because it reminds us of something simple: brands with history don’t have to look old, and new brands don’t have to look impersonal. For an e-shop, the challenge is to build an identity that endures across multiple channels, turns attention into trust, and trust into sales. Branding is the infrastructure that makes every ad, every product page, and every product shipment work more cohesively. When handled strategically, it becomes one of a business’s most powerful assets.
Design Week: London agency bluemarlin refreshes heritage brand Dabur
Baymard Institute: Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
McKinsey & Company: The value of getting personalization right
PwC: Future of Customer Experience Survey
eMarketer / Insider Intelligence: Worldwide retail ecommerce sales forecasts
Rebranding is the process of renewing a brand's identity to remain relevant and attractive. For an e-commerce business, it is crucial because it enhances brand awareness, improves conversion rates, and increases customer trust.
Branding influences sales by increasing click-through rate and conversion rate, while enhancing the likelihood of repurchase. A strong brand creates trust and preference in customers, making the choice easier.
The key steps include brand audit, customer research, strategy formulation, identity system, conversion journey implementation, and rollout. Each step aims to ensure consistency and strengthen the brand identity.
Packaging design acts as a physical demonstration of the brand promise and enhances brand awareness. It should be legible, clearly indicate the category, and convey the key benefit without visual noise.
A consistent omnichannel presence enhances brand awareness and trust, making the brand more easily recognizable and less easily replaceable. Consistency in language, visuals, and promises ensures a consistent image across all channels.
Customer experience is a key factor in e-commerce branding, as it directly influences purchasing decisions. A positive experience builds trust and loyalty, while a bad experience can lead to brand churn.
