The Most Underused Section on D2C Website

Exhibit 1️⃣ — Imagine there is a brand that is selling traditional Indian snacks — let’s say namkeen. You know the quality is the best, it is made with proper hygiene. 

Exhibit 2️⃣ — Imagine there is another brand that is also selling traditional Indian snacks, namkeen only. It has all the qualities the above one has, same no palm oil and no preservatives. But it also says that — to empower the village women in Rajasthan, they started this brand. Now, more than 3000 women work with them. It has helped them educate their daughters and protect them from child marriage. 

🤔 Now tell me which brand you would support? 

You may say— But Diksha, the story of the second brand is too emotional, not everyone has a story like that, C’mon!

Fair, fair, I hear you. Let’s try another one.

Exhibit 3️⃣— Imagine there is a brand that is selling traditional Indian snacks. Best quality, best hygiene, no palm oil, and no preservatives. Their origin story goes like this —

One Diwali evening, a family was sitting together after the puja. The couple was telling their children that their grandmother used to make extensive snacks and food for Diwali. It used to be a week-long process. Now the children want the same snack, and the couple also wants them to have the same food that they had grown up eating.

In the quest to recreate it, they searched every brand out there and tried multiple South Indian traditional snacks. Some were too spicy for children, some were too unhealthy to give them, and none of them had the taste that they grew up eating.

So the couple searched for the authentic recipe. It took them a while to find it and perfect it, but they finally managed to give their children the taste of their childhood.

Something that started as a small moment has now become a shared joy. SMJ brand provides you with the authentic taste of your childhood — the snacks you grew up eating. Authentically sourced. Made with Grandma’s love.

🤔 Now tell me, would you want just a snack (Exhibit 1st) or would you want to eat the snacks of your childhood (Exhibit 3rd)?

This is what we are going to talk about in today’s edition — How to write ‘Our Story’ section well.

🙄Every time I go to a website of a D2C brand, I notice two things — either their origin story exists in the footnote of the website buried with 36 other things or it stays on the homepage but it doesn’t evoke any emotions and doesn't serve its purpose. 

Hardly have I come across any brand that is telling the brand story right. 

We’ll cover — why it is important to have the story section on the homepage (now you know), how to get it right so it moves the needle for you and what not to do in this section.

Shall we move ahead?

The basic hygiene of utilising the ‘Our Story’ section in the right way includes:

1/ A dedicated section on the homepage
2/ Not burying it in the footnote
3/ Using it further in the content to reinforce it

Apart from it, here are three questions that every founder can ask themselves to write a better brand story.

It usually starts with a problem that feels personal and too big to ignore. Think about those moments when you first saw the problem. What did you feel at that time?

Think of that moment when that snack fell short, the market disappointed you and you felt like someone needed to do something about it. Or the personal problem you experienced in your daily routine that was too frustrating to ignore. Or the moment when you wanted to do something for someone else like the rural women of Rajasthan and that led to building a brand.

Think of those exact moments. Take your thoughts away from thinking in time to thinking in feelings.

That's where the story is built — in the details of what didn't work before you built this.

When you tell your reader what else you tried, what fell short, and why nothing in the market was good enough, you end up answer the most important question— ‘Why you’, among the 50 other brands sitting in the same category?

Usually a brand story ends with — and that's how XYZ was born. But it leaves out an important beat after that — what actually changed after this brand came to life?

It doesn't have to be huge. Most of us are solving everyday problems — healthy food, better personal care. So even one line like — now kids on my street call me snack uncle — gives the story that cherry on top to really end it.

P.S. These questions are non-exhaustive. This is a good starting point for someone who is writing a brand story. They help you think in the right direction and nudge you to think in feelings.

Here are a few examples with the reasoning on what not to do in your brand story. 

Perfora started on a great note. They placed the story on the home page, they even used illustrations of founders but and it is a BIG BUT, the story doesn’t have any emotion. It doesn’t even have a story in it. It reads more like a product benefit statement rather than a brand story. 

Now tell me, would you feel like buying the product after reading this? You may become interested and want to know more about the product but it still keeps you in a thinking loop. It isn’t moving you closer to the buying funnel.

This is the most common one. Whenever a founder is asked to describe their brand story, they usually describe it in a timeline instead of feelings. Though the timeline provides a comprehensive view, it still ends up being mechanical. The purpose of telling a story which helps your audience to connect with you and that still doesn’t get fulfilled here either.

This is another common way founders describe their story or use it as the About section. This starts off great and it appears like they are about to tell you a story but leads to nowhere. This can be a good mission statement if you want to include that in your website but it fails as a brand story. While this contains some emotion, it is mostly aspirational and doesn’t do heavy lifting like a brand story.

This is it for today’s newsletter. I’ll see you next week with another edition on the D2C brand’s website.

— Diksha
Your Website Fixer