Your food brand website has more than one customer
By Alastair Poole
Your food brand website has more than one customer
By Alastair Poole
The person buying a jar is not the only person using your website.
There is the customer wondering where to buy your product. The loyal fan looking for another flavour. The retailer assessing whether the brand feels credible. The journalist looking for the story. The potential stockist trying to find a contact.
And, if you sell direct, the person who simply wants to buy six packs without fighting the website.
Good food brand website design needs to accommodate all of them without feeling like six websites stitched together.
The starting point is the commercial role of the site. Is ecommerce central? Is retail distribution the priority? Does the website primarily need to build brand desire and direct people to stockists? Is it there to support a sales team?
The answer changes the architecture.
Whatever the model, products need to be easy to understand. Product pages should quickly communicate what something is, why it is different, available formats and the information customers genuinely need.
Do not make people excavate basic facts from lifestyle copy.
Brand storytelling matters. Clarity comes first.
Then there is appetite. Food is sensory, and digital cannot provide taste or smell, so photography, film, language and motion have to work harder. That does not mean covering every page in slow-motion ingredient shots. It means finding a visual language that makes the product feel desirable and recognisable.
The trade audience should not be forgotten either. Retail buyers and stockists may need range details, credentials, distribution information, contacts and downloadable assets. Those things should be easy to find without turning the consumer experience into a corporate brochure.
Most importantly, shelf and screen should feel connected.
The strongest food brands are recognisable wherever they appear. Packaging, website, social content and campaigns reinforce one another rather than reinventing the brand for each channel.
A website should not simply repeat what is on the pack.
It should give the brand room to explain, prove and grow.
The person buying a jar is not the only person using your website.
There is the customer wondering where to buy your product. The loyal fan looking for another flavour. The retailer assessing whether the brand feels credible. The journalist looking for the story. The potential stockist trying to find a contact.
And, if you sell direct, the person who simply wants to buy six packs without fighting the website.
Good food brand website design needs to accommodate all of them without feeling like six websites stitched together.
The starting point is the commercial role of the site. Is ecommerce central? Is retail distribution the priority? Does the website primarily need to build brand desire and direct people to stockists? Is it there to support a sales team?
The answer changes the architecture.
Whatever the model, products need to be easy to understand. Product pages should quickly communicate what something is, why it is different, available formats and the information customers genuinely need.
Do not make people excavate basic facts from lifestyle copy.
Brand storytelling matters. Clarity comes first.
Then there is appetite. Food is sensory, and digital cannot provide taste or smell, so photography, film, language and motion have to work harder. That does not mean covering every page in slow-motion ingredient shots. It means finding a visual language that makes the product feel desirable and recognisable.
The trade audience should not be forgotten either. Retail buyers and stockists may need range details, credentials, distribution information, contacts and downloadable assets. Those things should be easy to find without turning the consumer experience into a corporate brochure.
Most importantly, shelf and screen should feel connected.
The strongest food brands are recognisable wherever they appear. Packaging, website, social content and campaigns reinforce one another rather than reinventing the brand for each channel.
A website should not simply repeat what is on the pack.
It should give the brand room to explain, prove and grow.