Taco Bell VS. Taco ‘bout Sushi:
Taco Bell, a somewhat well known and arguably acclaimed chain of restaurants, is likely the biggest competition an up and coming Taco Sushi/Sushi Taco shop can face. While “Taco ‘bout Sushi” has a clear advantage of offering two delicious types of food in one easy to acquire package, “Taco Bell” has the advantage of being a multi-million chain restaurant with decades of experience and customer loyalty under their belt offering products at a third the of our prices. Needless to say, as the future go to Taco place, Taco Bell is our greatest adversary.
Examining their website is an adventure into bright colors and pictures of food. While one might associate mexican food with more earthy tones and dark greens, Taco bell makes the interesting choice going with a palette of rich purple and dark blacks. This is an odd choice, purple isn’t a color associated with fast food or mexican, nor have the advantage the color red has of stimulating hunger. While not exactly intuitive for a mexican restaurant it would stick out like a sore thumb when compared to the humble “Taco ‘bout Sushi” website. We go with a more traditional color scheme, featuring shades of brown and off whites, combining taco shell orange with salmon-ish pink. It’s not over stimulating and while has a more varied palette feels more welcoming. Taco Bell’s purple feels empowered, bold, and loud. This feels extreme for a mexican restaurant, or in our case, the humble sushi taco. Perhaps the in-your-face feeling is appealing to some, but doesn’t feel suited for the style of restaurant.
Taco Bell made an interesting decision when building the layout of the site. While many similar websites, including “Taco ‘bout Sushi”, choose to place a navigation bar at the top of the page, roughly eye level for any visitors, Taco Bell instead places their navigation bar on the left hand side. This features a few options, including Food, an online menu/opportunity to order food; Locations, a simple search for taco bells in your area; The Feed, a Taco Bell News page; Live Mas; a page about Taco Bell’s charitable actions; and a “More” tab. Opening “More” pulls out a tab from the side. The tab includes links to a news page, carreer opportunities, Nutrition facts, an online apparel store, a contact page, and their “About” page for the company. Despite being organized, it’s more cluttered. It feels like there’s always more to see, which while is good incentive for a customer to search the entire site is also nigh overwhelming. The color scheme is fitting for the design, to say the least. There is navigation bar at the top of the screen, but given how small the text is and the options available it’s clear the side bar is the main attraction. It allows a search of the menu, a “log in” option, and an easy search for a restaurant near you. “Taco ‘bout Sushi” is a simpler, humbler layout. A logo in one corner and basic location information in the other, all other aspects of the site can be navigated to via our navigation bar at the top of the page. It’s a constant part of the page, making it easy to get anywhere from anywhere on the site. It’s simple and clean, thoroughly intuitive, and most of all all about putting the customer first.
At first glance navigating the Taco Bell website seems fairly intuitive. Everything is correctly labeled, but the labels aren’t quite obvious, in particular “The Feed” and “Live Mas”. The feed, while revealed to be a pun if explored, could be any number of things for a mexican restaurant. It makes sense, but most hungry customers won’t care enough to check. Live Mas, the latest taco bell slogan, means “live more”. While it’s debatable if you’re truly living without sushi in your tacos, the problem lies more in the use of spanish. Mas, a simple word, still isn’t part of the American vocalbularly. It, like the rest of the website, is more about encouraging further exploration of the site rather than the simple “A to B” route that would best serve the customer. That being said, it at least succeeds at its purpose. The true confusion comes, however, with clicking the “food” tab. It presents large pictures of food, with the interesting design choice of scrolling down unveiling a new layer/section of the menu. It’s a very intriguing “animation”, but seems unnecessarily complicated and serves little more than to throw the visitor off.
On paper Taco Bell’s website clearly trumps the “Taco ‘bout sushi”. It’s bold, makes creative design choices, and has obvious brand recognition on its side. Where our website really shines though is the idea of “deafening silence”. The simplicity of the design and muted colors make it more visually appealing. It’s not overbearing and is a good representation of the product sold. Our site is one that a grandma could use with confidence. Taco Bell, while the gateway to delicious tacos, over complicates what could be a simple process.