The Ghirardelli brand was built on the principles of premium and quality. Lindt and Sprungli Chocolate of Switzerland may have acquired Ghirardelli Chocolate Company as a wholly-owned subsidiary in 1998, but Ghirardelli is one of the few chocolate companies that maintains complete control over its manufacturing process. Since the buyout, its product offerings have expanded considerably and are increasingly available to the masses. We paid a visit to Ghirardelli.com to see if its web offering was as rich as its chocolate.

It turns out Ghirardelli.com could stand a lot more sweetening from visuals to site architecture to brand building opportunities. The home page is very basic, with mouth-watering images of the product contained in a chocolate bar shaped rectangle, and clickable site areas listed in the center. The best thing about the site is the imagery; products are photographed and displayed well. But great product photos do not necessarily translate into a great look and feel. Without use of any Flash technology or other inventive design strategy to add interaction or excitement to the user experience, the site doesn’t amount to much more than a typical product catalog.

Along with the product pages, About Our Chocolate and History of Chocolate are among the better content areas, rich with information but again, falling flat visually. With the use of Flash technology, A Guide to Chocolate could also be much more exciting; as it is now, it’s just data written on a timeline.

The Recipe section represents another missed branding opportunity. It offers visitors plenty of great sounding recipes with accompanying photos, but it’s a lost opportunity to invite interaction with visitors and thus, increase site traffic. Contests encouraging Ghirardelli fans to share and discuss recipes would open a dialogue with consumers and provide valuable demographic information, not to mention fresh site content.

Ghirardelli shop locations are laid out on a US map and each product page lists the type of retailer where products might be carried. Offering consumers an actual store locator engine, or at least a list of chains and specialty stores that carry Ghirardelli products, would help increase sales and provide the site with a go-to function, helping to increase site traffic.

All in all, Ghirardelli.com leaves much to be desired. It could benefit greatly by putting more love into the web effort, offering consumers an online experience on par with “premium” product offerings. Yes, the focus of the site is to market the products and, on a bare bones level, Ghirardelli.com does an adequate job of accomplishing this. But by enhancing the site with more sophisticated functionality and by building opportunities for consumers to interface with the brand in the form of an improved customer service area and any sort of community section, Ghirardelli would leave web surfers with a much better aftertaste.