Céréal: business-to-consumer website
UX strategy focusing on users’ intuitive choices to bring consumers closer to the brand
- UX strategy
- Trend and landscape analysis
- Storytelling
- Web design & digital activation
- Digital strategy
- Website
- SEO strategy
- Shooting
The re-design project of the Céréal site started with two fundamental requirements:
- making the digital channel a fundamental asset to nurture awareness of the range and of the brand;
- to bring the consumer closer to its brand offer through repositioning on the website: a new way of communicating that is both dynamic and in step with current trends;
Céréal specializes in the production of dietetic and health foods based on natural and controlled ingredients. Its value proposition rests on product lines designed for categories of users with special nutritional needs (e.g. people with particular food intolerances).
The brand is also characterized by the quality of the products and their process of careful selection and preparation. Brand values on which to build detailed storytelling, able to inspire confidence and generate curiosity.
Atc started the project by first exploring the needs of the target audience in order to deduce the behaviour and activity of the web interface, in addition to looking for possible navigation blind spots or potential interaction difficulties.
The analysis of the site in progress brought to light some key points, such as:
- the presentation of the brand offer by product lines - potentially distracting for a user unfamiliar with the brand;
- possible overlaps between products belonging to different lines with similar benefits. A feature that makes the acquisition by the user of an overall view of the brand portfolio generally less intuitive.
The agency's strategic improvement actions therefore focused on the re-classification of products and on the optimization of the user's search and selection processes. The creation of intuitive macro-categories - sweet / savoury / drinks etc - led to redefining the taxonomy by meeting the “natural” needs of a user looking for a product and reversing the offer logic: no longer brand-centric delivery starting from the product lines, but a functional user journey for the shopper and the purchase funnel.
Céréal's new business to consumer website adopts the concept of "user-centricity", realizing it practically through a selection interface that welcomes users who have just landed on the homepage. The approach is mobile first: the most important elements for the user experience have prominence and dictate the hierarchical order that is guaranteed on the desktop.
By means of the selector, the user can access the brand's offer through a personalised navigation path, starting from the choice of the product's benefit, to arrive gradually through intermediate selections to a range of products of interest.
The creative concept underlying the whole project is the settings of the specialized shop, where a first touchpoint is the choice of particular "free-from" products (e.g. gluten-free), then, within that category, the relevant “shelf” of relevance, with sweet, savoury, drinks etc... In this way the homepage works like a real shop window designed to attract the user, convey key messages and offer a selection of customized products.
One way of exploring the website draws on some behavioural traits typical of European users, especially digital natives or digital-oriented consumers, such as preferences – popularised, among other things, by the spread of e-commerce apps - for less hierarchical architectures to allow a greater freedom of navigation. To meet the needs of users more accustomed to a "classic" way of accessing a brand portfolio, there is the "All products" page, which shows individual items grouped by product families.
Functional interactivity in the product pages
The pages of the individual products are enriched with interactive elements, designed to promote engagement - and therefore also page stickiness - without sacrificing the information value: the ingredients slider, a UI component which makes a great graphic impact, for example, is an interactive narrative element which characterises the genuineness and ethical nature of the products.
The result is that instead of a brand-centric delivery starting with the product lines, the Céréal website now features a functional user journey for the shopper and the purchase funnel
