Your brand is often experienced primarily – if not entirely – through your digital platforms. From websites and apps to portals and product interfaces, these experiences define how users perceive and interact with your business. But what happens when those experiences are fragmented?
As a UX Designer running Make it Clear, a UX agency based in London, I’ve worked with many clients who are grappling with this very issue. They’re dealing with multiple digital products, legacy platforms, and a patchwork of digital frameworks that have evolved separately over time. The result? A fractured digital identity – one that confuses users, weakens brand perception, and undermines the value of even the best-designed services.
Let’s explore why this fragmentation is such a big deal, the opportunities it presents, and how to start building stronger, unified digital foundations for your brand.
The Problem: Fragmented Digital Experiences
One of the most common issues we see is a lack of cohesion across digital touchpoints. A company may have several customer-facing platforms – maybe a website, a product portal, a mobile app – each designed at a different time, by different teams, often without a shared set of design principles or branding guidelines.
Some of these might be legacy systems that haven’t been updated in years. Others might be newer but built using different frameworks or by different vendors. And while that might make sense operationally, it doesn’t make sense to the user.
Users don’t care about your internal systems. They don’t care if Platform A is on an older tech stack, or that Platform B was acquired and hasn’t yet been rebranded. What they care about is the experience – and when that experience is inconsistent, jarring, or hard to navigate, they notice. Worse, they judge your entire brand based on it.
A fractured experience can lead to:
- Confusion around brand identity
- A loss of user trust
- Reduced engagement
- Drop-offs in conversion
- Increased support costs
- Internal inefficiencies in maintaining and updating design assets
When users have to jump between platforms with different styles, behaviors, and navigation patterns, it breaks the sense of continuity. If the typography shifts, buttons behave differently, or workflows don’t align, it feels like they’re jumping between completely unrelated brands. And that’s a huge problem.
The Opportunity: Creating Consistent, Delightful Experiences
Here’s the upside: every fragmented system represents an opportunity. A chance to unify, simplify, and truly own the end-to-end experience you offer your users.
By developing strong digital brand foundations, you can:
- Ensure a consistent look and feel across all touchpoints
- Create seamless journeys that reduce user friction
- Reflect your brand’s unique personality in every interaction
- Design experiences that are both usable and delightful
- Increase retention and engagement by building familiarity and trust
One of the most powerful outcomes of this kind of work is that it helps distinguish your brand in a crowded market. Yes, there are many great UX frameworks and design systems out there. But if you rely solely on those out-of-the-box solutions without layering on your own brand essence, everything starts to feel generic.
The real magic happens when you bring your brand’s voice, tone, and personality into the interface – through things like animations, micro-interactions, and even how you design your empty states or loading screens. That’s where you go from being functional to being memorable.
Getting Started: Auditing, Aligning, and Building Foundations
So, how do you start solving this challenge?
At Make it Clear, we typically begin by auditing all existing platforms and digital products. This includes:
- What platforms are in use?
- Which ones are legacy and which are still in development?
- What’s working well and what’s causing issues for users?
- What’s planned for the future?
This audit gives us a clear picture of the current landscape. From there, we run stakeholder workshops to understand different needs and perspectives – product owners, UX designers, brand teams, developers, and marketing leads. Everyone plays a role in shaping the user experience.
It’s especially important to bring brand teams into the process early. Why? Because a design system isn’t just a technical tool – it’s an extension of your brand. You want every component, from buttons to modals, to express something about who you are.
From Audit to Action: Building Your Design Foundations
Once we’ve gathered all the insights, we create a foundational list of design elements. These typically include:
- Typography
- Color palette
- Logo usage
- Iconography
- UI components like form fields, buttons, text inputs
- States and transitions (hover, focus, disabled)
- Loaders, spinners, and other micro-interactions
We don’t just look at what these elements are, but how they behave and feel. For example, what does a loading animation say about your brand? Is it cold and mechanical, or warm and human? These little details matter more than you think.
All of this is usually pulled together in Figma, where the system can be shared and reviewed collaboratively. Once signed off, we work with development teams to implement it consistently across platforms – often building shared design libraries and code components that can be reused across apps and sites.
Maintaining Momentum: Communication and Governance
Creating a design foundation is only the beginning. Embedding it into your culture and processes is the real challenge.
That’s why we place a lot of emphasis on:
- Communicating the process to internal stakeholders
- Presenting outcomes clearly so teams understand what’s been created
- Training teams on how to use the system effectively
- Establishing governance to maintain consistency over time
Without clear ownership and communication, design systems can quickly drift and become outdated. But when maintained well, they become a powerful tool for scaling design across teams and products – while keeping everything aligned and user-focused.
Final Thoughts: Your Brand Is in the Experience
Digital fragmentation isn’t just a UX problem. It’s a brand problem. Inconsistent interfaces confuse users, erode trust, and dilute your brand’s impact. But with the right approach, it’s also a huge opportunity.
By investing in strong digital foundations – ones that combine UX best practices with your unique brand essence – you can turn every digital touchpoint into an ambassador for your business.
And when done right, users won’t just use your platforms. They’ll enjoy them, remember them, and come back to them – because they make sense, they feel good, and they feel like you.
Book a call
We’d love to talk to you about how Make it Clear can help your brand build strong digital foundations. Book a call here.
