Who doesn't love a good chocolate bar, especially when they're made with a few simple, plant-based, gluten-free ingredients? As a bonus, by purchasing them you get chances to win prizes like $10,000 in cash, an Xbox, a Tesla Model 3, or even a Willy Wonka inspired chocolate factory.
That's the idea behind Feastables, created by star YouTube personality MrBeast.
The Feastables website shows just how far one can take Shopify customization in an effort to create a real experience. The fun, over-the-top online store is at https://feastables.com/, built on Shopify.
If you're a parent to kids that watch any amount of YouTube (as I am), you're probably familiar with MrBeast, whose YouTube channel has over 98 million subscribers. He is the king of contests and giving away money, and one of his recent ideas was to create a Willy Wonka style chocolate factory and give it away. The vehicle for the chances to win are codes you get from boxes of his very own chocolate bars branded as Feastables.
MrBeast is known to spend ridiculous amounts of money on his endeavors, and I'm sure the Feastables website is no exception. It probably pays off. According to a May 2022 Business Insider post, Feastables has made over $10 million dollars (source - note this is behind a paywall).
Where to begin with the visuals? This may go without saying, but the shop uses a custom theme, and is not immediately recognizable as a Shopify store at first glance. There has obviously been an incredible amount of customization on this site. It looks like an old Windows PC desktop exploded and the 1980's came out. There is animated dripping chocolate, retro-looking loading bars and buttons, pastel colors, 80's floating shapes (that remind me of my brother's bedsheets...but I digress), sparkles, and lots of neon.
Like most Shopify sites, there is a pop-up modal that appears within seconds, except this one asks for a mobile number rather than an email, and offers a chance to win prizes.
The homepage is very busy but contains just about everything one needs to know what Feastables is all about:
A site as designed at this could be difficult for visually impaired visitors to navigate, so it's interesting to note that Feastables uses accessiBe for accessibility, a menu for which is located at the bottom left of every screen. AccessiBe offers tons of site customization modes (e.g., "Seizure Safe Profile" or "Vision Impaired Profile") as well as various content adjustments that allow the user to control text, colors, and more.
This isn't a feature specific to Shopify, but has been added to the Shopify store seamlessly. It might be something you consider adding to your store to ensure the full breadth of your audience feels included. This is pretty necessary on a site that gets as much traffic as Feastables, which on the slowest month still has over 1.1 million visitors.
This site is nothing if not fun. Here are some things I found that are completely unnecessary as far as selling chocolate bars, but add to the fun of the site:
There are a number of apps installed, but not all of them could be identified (some might be custom, or lesser known). The main Shopify apps installed are:
It's not clear why they would need two different back in stock apps - perhaps they're testing, or changing tactics and the old one is still installed. Scripts and code left behind by uninstalled apps is something Shopify stores have to watch out for, as old code can bloat templates and contribute to slowing down page load times.
This Shopify site has no collection pages - only product pages. There are only around 10 products, so this makes sense. Shopify product pages can often look boxy, but the main product photos aren't in a box, and they overlap a horizontal line, making things feel more layered. Other bands on the page are divided by a ripped texture, lending an even more layered, analog feel to the design.
Product pages avoid the standard "boxy" Shopify look by using a product image not inside a rectangle
There are reviews clearly presented below the title, which I feel is an effective location because a user's eyes are initially going to be around the title. Clicking the review tally leads to the full review section lower on the page. We've seen this similar model on other sites, like in our review of Laser Tweets. The reviews here also have a row of customer submitted photos above them, which reveal full reviews in a modal if clicked. Feastables is doing the social proof thing well, which is so important in building trust with your potential customers.
The "boring" product ingredients are listed in a fun way ("Nutrition Factz") in keeping with the playful tone of the site.
Once you scroll past the reviews, there is a section promoting their new "EVERYTHING Bundle" and it includes an Add to Cart Button for the bundle right there. Why not cross-sell what is most likely your biggest margin product with as little friction as possible? This is different than the common list of products "you may also like" often seen at the bottom of product pages on Shopify sites.
There are very few pages on the site, but the ones that are there are totally unique from one another. The About page is simple and really more visual then informational, and the Prizes page is also a highly designed page (with lots of neon!) that explains how to play and shows how many prizes are left to give away.
The cart is the drawer-style that flies out from the right when you add an item. I'm not sure if these are more or less effective than taking someone directly to a cart page, which this site doesn't have - the drawer is the cart. Feastables is still able to offer upsells in the drawer style cart, so it's likely not affecting their ability to increase average order value.
The checkout screen looks like a standard Shopify checkout. Again, here they are able to try and upsell more candy bars on the right hand side, and there is an inexpensive option for me to "1-click Protect" my order with Route (see link to this in the Shopify App list above). Somehow this Route option can "Instantly resolve shipping issues." I've never seen this option in the wild before, so I don't know how effective it is. Clicking "Learn More" opens a small modal where Route claims to have protected over 50 million orders, so they must be doing something of value.
One thing that should not be overlooked as part of the online shopping experience is the actual shipping and product delivery. Because we did go through with an order of MrBeast Bars (in the name of research!) there are a few things to note about the delivery and product:
Predictably, Feastables makes heavy use of social and ads on those social networks. If MrBeast knows anything, it's how to generate content that gets traffic. Feastables has a Discord community with over 8,000 members, and links to Tiktok (262k followers), Twitter (10.9k followers), and Instagram (99k followers) from their footer.
They use Google Ads, including keyword variations of their own misspelled name ("feastabls", "feastabes", "feasstables", "feastanbl") and terms like "mr beast chocolate", and "mr beast bar". They also make heavy use of Facebook ads (over 90!) with varying graphics and messages.
The Feastables site is a visually rich, fun, branded experience. It shows that with a standard Shopify store and a few apps, you can create a unique, highly designed, and engaging shop that can handle millions of visitors.
If you have a business with a sense of humor and a unique take on products and apparel you'd like to grow through online sales, Shopify is a great option. You can start with a standard Shopify store, and grow into Shopify Plus if you scale up your sales and customer base. We would be delighted to see how we can help you get started, so contact us today.
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