Let’s analyse Rituals website, a cosmetic brand founded in 2000 by Cloosterman, as he said:
“We rush, and we tend to forget what it is to enjoy the small pleasures in life”.
Competitor analysis
The take-away experienceis essential. Rituals website is colored, the front page shows a photo of people happy to be together reflecting emotions and feelings like happiness, conviviality, sharing. The sentence “The tradition of giving” and the philosophy of the brand stated enable the customer to travel into Rituals’ universe, its special atmosphere. Thus, through Rituals’ website the customer is emotionally engaged and has a great take-away experience.
Kiehl’s website focuses on products and important information like delivery, availability of experts, guarantee… This way customers feel safe, the feeling of vulnerability is low as he can contact experts directly, but they might feel less engaged.
Concerning Chanel’s website, I would place it between Rituals and Kiehl’s about the take-away experience: the atmosphere and colors represent perfectly the brand but like Kiehl’s, products are shown directly when we connect to the website.
Also, these websites provide customers with clear return policy, large range of products, free or discount shipping, an ease of checkout … thus the Online Customer Experience satisfaction is complete as the process to buy online and to get information is easy.
Concerning the structure of product landing pages, according to Ania Hernandez and Marc L. Resnick (2013), Rituals’, Chanel and Kiehl’s product landing pages follow the Gutenberg diagram. It describes a path that runs in a straight line from the top left to the bottom right. Referring to Ania and Marc’s study, using it is effective for Rituals, Chanel and Kiehl’s.
Source: Ania Hernandez and Marc L. Resnick (2013)
Finally, using SimilarWeb to compare Rituals’ website with Chanel and Kiehl’s, we see that in terms of audience, Chanel is more visiting than Rituals than Kiehl’s. And the visits over time keep growing, even if it is very slow for Kiehl’s.
Consumer analysis
Considering the philosophy, story of the brand and the while range of product it provides, Rituals targets lots of people, young (18-20) to older (60) both women and men.
On her way to go to work, Alice noticed a Rituals advertising on the metro station that catches her attention. Intrigued, she decides to do some research during the day on the internet. As she thinks the product is expensive, she compares it with other brands. She finally decides to go shopping and see products by herself. Before making the act of buying, she asks for information at the vendor. Decided to buy a product, she signs up to receive newsletter and promotional offers. Happy with her product, she agrees to give a feedback about her satisfaction, which is complete, by email, a few days later.
While Mary is spending time on social media, she sees pictures of Rituals products that a friend of her recently bought. As she wonders what this brand is, she surfs on the internet, reads forums to have some opinions, and watches Rituals promo video to get to know the brand. As she wants to know more about return policy and discount shipping, she contacts the chat support of Rituals. Happy with the answers, she decides to buy online and adds complementary products that are recommended on the product landing page. Finally, when creating her Rituals account, she enters personal data and signs up to receive Rituals newsletter and promotional offers.
To sum up, Rituals tries to make its website reflect its image, its values. Through it, customers are more likely to perceive them and thus to share Rituals values, turning them into loyal customers. Moreover, targeting a large range of people enables the brand to address to everyone without exception. Rituals still has a long way to achieve a better audience on its website like Chanel, but communicating on the internet, social media… enhances the brand to get a better visibility worldwide.
Referencing
Ania Hernandez and Marc L. Resnick (2013), Placement of Call to Action Buttons for Higher Website Conversion and Acquisition: An Eye Tracking Study. Sage Journals. [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/1541931213571232[29thNovember 2018]
Benjamin Jackson (2015), Meet The Maker: Raymond Cloosterman, The Man Behind Rituals, The Window, 8thJuly 2015 [Online] https://thewindow.barneys.com/raymond-cloosterman-rituals/[29thNovember 2018]
Rituals [Online] https://www.rituals.com/en-gb/home[29th november 2018]
Chanel [Online] https://www.chanel.com/en_GB/ [29th november 2018]
Kiehl’s [Online] https://www.kiehls.co.uk[29thNovember 2018]
SimilarWeb (2018), Website Performance, SimilarWeb [Online]
https://pro.similarweb.com/#/website/worldwide-overview/rituals.com,chanel.com/*/999/3m?webSource=Total[3rdDecember 2018]
SimilarWeb (2018), Website Performance, SimilarWeb [Online]
[3rdDecember 2018]
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