How About Your Competitor’s Official Website?
My team chose Yakult, a non-beverage brand for analysis, which is the world’s leading probiotic beverage created in Japan in 1935. Obviously, Yakult is also the most popular and representative product of this brand. As a probiotic drink, the small bottle contains billions of “good bacteria” that are alive and active. As more and more people pay attention to healthy eating habits, probiotic items are not strangers in our daily lives. They are friendly bacteria that can help bestow a health benefit on the host when administered in suitable doses and aid in correcting digestive system abnormalities.
Who Are Lovely Yakult’s Competitors in The United States?
These days, probiotic drinks have expanded widely, ranging from easy-to-drink yogurt smoothies to sparkling bacteria-packed waters. Siggi’s, GT’s Living Foods, Chobani, and others research and produce similar probiotic yogurts from the brands’ perspective. Consequently, I am inclined to analyze GT’s website to find the web’s digital experience for its target audience.
What Does GT’s Living Foods Website Look Like?
The website, GT’s Living Foods has an excellent layout with a good strategy behind the designation. Indeed, as a web page visitor, the functionality of the brand’s most recommended products and various functional areas at the top of the homepage can be clearly seen. Additionally, I firmly believe that GT’s official website is looking perfect from answering four basic questions.
- What is the business’s categorization, and is it evident on the website?
As the homepage presents, GT’s main business category is a healthy beverage that can not only provide nutrition for physical bodies but also boost mood to increase productivity. And for target audiences, they do not have to find those benefits carefully because the big image is so clear that everyone is able to read easily.
2. What is the website’s purpose, and does the design help it achieve it?
In my opinion, GT has two main reasons to build this website. First, the webpage is an effective channel to deliver a basic introduction and benefits of probiotic drinks to consumers.
Then, the attractive designation also shows products are selling at markets. That is to say, individual buyers or business buyers can spend time with items on the website directly. However, the drawback is that people are only able to purchase specific products instead of all different beverages. Furthermore, due to some products containing alcohol, only a limited selection of product offerings are available to buy online.
3. What is the target audience, and how is this factored into the design?
Regarding the probiotic drink industry, those items are more popular with younger customers among Americans because nearly 70% of consumers aged from 25 to 34 years reported interest in products that contain probiotics and reported actively buying such products, according to the data research in 2016. Moreover, a large number of female consumers are fond of these healthy beverages. Therefore, younger consumers and women seem to be more impressed than older consumers and men by the health properties of food and drink products. In addition to this, combine the online consumers’ characteristics, the primary target audience of GT should be a mix of high-traffic content discoverers and deliberate internet shoppers.
Based on the personalities of target customers, GT puts its mind on creating a user-centric webpage. For example, sales leads can require knowledge of probiotic food’s benefits. And the web developer actualized six FAQ structured data pages, one of which answered general queries and the other five optimized for product line-specific questions instead of traditional FAQ contents. For online shoppers, the detailed contents are like sale professionals to introduce the brand’s and items’ advantages and attract consumers to purchase.
4. What action should the audience take, and is this design encouraging them to do so?
After careful consideration, target audiences would be inclined to add items into the cart and click the “purchase” button. The designation of the shopping process is logical, and users can purchase products easily by following instructions step by step. Despite that, as I mentioned before, GT does not launch all their drinks on the online platform, so it will lead to a loss of profits and cause users inconveniences.
Final Evaluation
Overall, GT’s official website reveals all functionalities, such as products’ information, benefits, brand’s story, and so on. In my opinion, the webpage is innovative and operative because it reflects the brand’s personality completely–natural, fresh, and peaceful. Given aesthetics, beige background, colorful images, and lucid fronts are all in accordance with the brand’s nature. Furthermore, due to various screen sizes that target consumers visiting, the company developed a responsive web design in accordance with different screens.
In addition, to be honest, I appreciate the new keyword searching on GT’s page. That is to say, the enterprise restructured its site structure to add a page for Kombucha Benefits after analyzing search terms with significant traffic volume that could move near the top of search results. Another usefulness of content is the personalized story from the founder and this brand. GT crafted a welcome sequence sent from the founder that describes the brand’s founding story, including his mother’s illness battle and how he began making kombucha at 15. Compared to the background of other brands, the touching tale can construct a sense of intimacy and connection between users and GT.
Notwithstanding, the current webpage still has some drawbacks to improve. For example, users cannot directly communicate with sales to consult the products’ benefits, prices, etc. In other words, GT should offer customer service through chat and phone, and email in various languages.
In conclusion, I definitely argue that GT has done an excellent job on web development because all crucial details related to products, brand and healthy recommendations can be found conveniently. On the other hand, everything is imperfect. If GT launches the customer service on the website, the page will be more attractive and operative.
