A Full Refresh with GT's Living Foods

GT's Living Foods

GT’s Living Foods has the same mission it did when the company started over 25 years ago in GT Dave’s kitchen — to share the gift of Kombucha in its purest, most potent form and help people everywhere live healthier, happier lives.

Over the past two and a half decades, GT’s has made kombucha mainstream in the U.S. and have helped popularize probiotics’ consumption and the focus on gut health.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

GT’S Living Foods has long had the top-selling kombucha on the market, and it was time to pave the way for direct-to-consumer discovery and sales via the Shopify Plus platform.

In addition to migrating the site to the e-commerce platform, GT’s needed a full site refresh — complete with search optimization, content strategy, UX/UI design strategy, and email flows.

One of the main challenges we overcame in this redesign was figuring out custom user flows for different products…

Only a limited selection of product offerings are available to purchase online.
Some products contain alcohol and cannot be displayed to underage users.
Products are available all around the country, but users need a way to locate where to buy.

With our strategy, design, and development approach, we created customized flows that enable users to discover and search for products, with a clear path for the next step to purchase.

Site users can explore the kombucha collections and choose to buy directly online, search for a local retailer, or learn more about the product. We also made it easy to explore the offerings — users can search by flavor profile, price, and alphabetical product order.
To find and buy locally, we implemented the Destini product locator app and a geolocator to enable users to find their favorite products in local retailers.
For GT’s line of Hard Kombucha, we added an age verification gate so that anyone viewing products with over .5% alcohol needs to confirm that they are 21+.

All of these UX/UI features enable customers to explore the GT’s product lines and easily take the next step to purchase online or find the nearest store that carries the product they’re looking for.

HIGHLIGHTS

New content optimized for organic search

GTs Living had a firm foundation in organic keyword traffic. After analyzing search terms with high traffic volume that could move near the top of search results, we reorganized their site structure to add a page for Kombucha Benefits.

Research shows that stacking the benefits in functional beverages offers the broadest appeal. Almost half of consumers (46%) seek two or more functional benefits. This page also covers the ingredients that bring the benefits.

Optimization of FAQ structured data

The primary target audience for GT’s Living Foods is a combination of high-traffic content discoverers and intentional online shoppers. Both audience subsets share in the pursuit of kombucha to some degree.

To take advantage of the organic traffic opportunities of consumers asking questions about kombucha, we reorganized their FAQ content with targeted keywords in the URLs, metadata, and copy. Instead of the typical single page for FAQs, we built six pages for FAQ structured data, one of which answered general questions, and the other five FAQ pages were optimized for questions about each product line.

Personalized-style emails from the founder

GT Dave still owns and directs the company (now worth nearly $1 billion), so it was essential to create a sense of intimacy and connection between the reader and GT himself. We crafted a welcome sequence sent from GT Dave that tells the brand’s origin story — his mother’s battle with cancer and how he started brewing kombucha at 15 years old.

Readers then receive a series of messages that share the health benefits of various offerings and the range of products.

It’s easy to send short sales emails with coupons and discounts, but that doesn’t build a loyal customer base. By sending heartfelt and informative broadcasts to the GT’s Family list, our email flows reinforce what GT’s is all about — healthy living and sharing the love.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

Translated the classic GT’s bottle design elements into a sleek, stylized, and uniform website experience
Developed and integrated interactive animation to all core pages
Rewrote and refined all website copy for a cohesive, on-brand experience
Enhanced the “About” brand story page by adding storytelling and animation elements to the company timeline
Optimized the FAQ format to educate consumers and drive SEO traffic