This paper is an analysis of SunBasket.com, including value content, metrics, and more as well as comparing it alongside HomeChef.com. This was done as an assignment for a university Intro to Web Publishing course.

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Sun Basket Popularity & Traffic Analysis
WEB SITE OVERVIEW
 General Industry & Company Information:
o Overview: Emerging in Europe in 2007, the meal kit industry is currently estimated to be
worth between $3 billion and $5 billion. Meal kit services sell subscriptions to customers then
ship a box of pre-portioned ingredients for a set number of meals each week to their home.
Customers then follow provided recipes to enjoy home cooked meals without the hassle of
prepping, grocery shopping, or deciding what to make for dinner.
Many services focus on healthy and natural foods, offering meal plans focused on
specific healthy lifestyles, like paleo and vegetarian. Ethical labor practices and eco-friendly
packaging are common themes across the industry as well. On average, meals range from $8 to
$12 per serving. The large variety of recipes available allows customers to try new dishes they
may have never even considered or heard of before.
Sun Basket, based on the Pacific Coast, is among competitors in the meal kit industry.
Organic produce, wild-caught seafood, and hormone- and antibiotic-free meats combine to create
customized meal options, all under 800 calories. Ranging from $10.99 to $11.99 per serving, Sun
Basket offers organic, gluten-free, paleo, vegetarian, and diabetes-friendly meal options to
customers in 40 states. The packaging is eco-friendly and recyclable, even down to the ice pack.
This company stands out from competitors because Chef Justine Kelly designs all meals,
which are then approved by a registered dietician. The majority of food products stem from small
Pacific coast farms using sustainable practices.

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o Trust: The USDA logo found above the fold on Sub Basket’s main page is hard
to miss. Seeing such a familiar federal logo says a lot about the company’s level of trust and
seriousness in ensuring its products are natural. Also on this page is the California Certified
Organic Farmers stamp, another credible partner. A professional chef creating meals that a
nutritionist then approves leads me to believe Sun Basket is an authority on the topic.
Various reputable media have covered Sun Basket, as can be found on the Press area of
the site. Here, links are provided to 54 articles and videos ranging from July 2015 to July 2018.
These links are to reputable sources including The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Press
coverage by such credible sources leads me to believe Sun Basket is indeed a very honest and
trustworthy company. One of the first several links is to an article by Whole Foods about Sun
Basket’s launch of a Diabetes-Friendly Meal Plan designed in collaboration with the American
Diabetes Association. Seeing that Sun Basket has worked with this association not only tells me
Sun Basket must indeed be a reputable brand, but also that the design of its meals are take very
seriously.
 Quality Content Assessment
o Credibility: I personally did not find any typos while looking through the content
on Sun Basket’s main page, but I did run a search engine optimization check for grammatical
errors. SEO Chat’s online spell checker found two minor errors, so the site on this topic seems to
me to be rather credible. According to PrePostSEO.com, Sun Basket’s site contains 71% and
29% duplicate content. Of this 29% however, the phrases said to be plagiarized are rather
generic, like “local farmers to bring the freshest seasonal ingredients to your kitchen,” for
example. The chances of these same words appearing in a similar order elsewhere on the web are

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not incredibly slim. Because these so-called plagiarized pages seem to be very generic, I do not
see this duplicate content being an issue.
o Value: It seems as though Sun Basket is more concerned about stressing the fact
that their products are organic, non-GMO, etc. than emphasizing the ease of cooking with Sun
Basket. Nowhere on the site does Sun Basket show a break down or video of what contents are
in the box when it is delivered. Having content of value on a site means giving visitors a reason
to want to spend time on it.
On the other hand, if one looks deep enough on the site, there are a number of short videos
showing how to do simple kitchen tasks and make several drinks and snacks. These videos,
along with blog-like posts by Sun Basket’s dietician would give visitors to the domain a reason
to spend more time on the site past just selecting their meals. The downside of this, however, is
that one must scroll all the way to the bottom of the site to see that these videos and dietician’s
posts exist.
 Competing Site. Home Chef is a strong competitor alongside Sun Basket in the meal kit
industry. Home Chef offers a slightly larger variety of meal plans than Sun Basket’s choice of
either the Classic or Family Plan. With Home Chef, customers can choose to serve two to six
people, two to six meals per week. Home Chef’s weekly menu offers customers three lunch and
13 dinner recipes costing $7.99 and $9.95 respectively—making the competitor several bucks
cheaper than Sun Basket. Home Chef also delivers to eight more states than Sun Basket does.
While both companies seem to be very concerned about the sources of their products, Sun
Basket’s food is more natural than the competitor, as all of its foods are organic and non-GMO,
in addition to being antibiotic-free. Home Chef on the other hand, only specifies that its products
come from vendors who use sustainable practices, while Sun Basket goes as far as giving

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detailed information about each individual farm its products derive from. Both use eco-friendly,
recyclable packaging.
In terms of the sites, both offer something the other does not. While both have received
coverage from reputable media outlets, Home Chef’s Press page only provides links to six
without requesting to see more, which is far less than the number of links found on
SunBasket.com. Home Chef’s main page features consumer Instagram posts using the
company’s special hashtag and a customer video review, as they unbox a meal. Sun Basket’s
main page focuses much more on introducing viewers to the people who grow, harvest, and
prepare their products to give a more personal feel to the company.
POPULARITY ANALYSIS
o Definitions: Backlink is a term for links found on a website that points to another
particular site. The domains, or sites, these backlinks are found on are known as referring
domains. It is important to calculate the number of backlinks per domain when analyzing this
information because if it looks as if one site is getting a tremendous amount of backlinks from
a small number of websites, it indicates that someone out there may be attempting to trick or
cheat the system, creating misleading analytics. This being said, a relatively low number of
backlinks per domain is most times better than large one because it is much more realistic.
Both sites in comparison have relatively low backlinks per referring domain.
o Comparison: A significantly larger number of backlinks exist for
HomeChef.com than do for SunBasket.com, even though Sun Basket has more referring
domains. While Sun Basket has given more of an indication of a significant number of articles
Total Backlinks No. of Referring
Domains
Avg. No. of Backlinks
per Domain
Sun Basket 24.8k 916 27
Home Chef 31.3K 894 35

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covering it compared to Home Chef, it appears many more links exist to HomeChef.com
overall. This excessive media coverage may give explanation to why Sun Basket has a higher
number of referring domains compared to Home Chef. Along with this, Home Chef has a
higher number of backlinks per referring domain, meaning it is mentioned by less sites, but
more often per site.
Home Chef’s much more centralized location within the U.S. compared to Sun
Basket is one reason I think Home Chef might have so many more backlinks. Home Chef also
delivers to eight more states than Sun Basket does. The larger number of people Home Chef can
reach as potential customers may lead to a larger number of blog posts, for example, created as
an individual’s personal review of the services.
o Analysis of Link Quality: Given the analytics calculated by SEMrush,
SunBasket.com’s top 10 referring domains included no restricted domains.
 Paleogrubs.com: Paleo Grubs is a blog devoted to those interested in or
living a paleo lifestyle. This site looks very professional, including much information about the
paleo lifestyle. For a site this devoted to paleo living to mention Sun Basket, I can only
conclude that this must be a high quality link, even though I saw no sign of credible sources or
partners on the site.
 Fannetasticfood.com: Fannetasticfood.com is a health, fitness, and food
blog ran by creator Anne, a registered dietician. A Press page exists on this domain with links to
over 120 articles Anne has either written, contributed to, or been featured in. These links lead to
domains including The Huffington Post, Health Magazine, and CNN among others, leading me
to believe this link is high quality.

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 Radiomd.com: This is a quality link because even though it is not a
restricted domain, its content includes a number of blog posts, videos, and podcasts by real
doctors about a wide variety of medical topics. At the bottom of the main page, there is a banner
listing several partners. While none were restricted domains nor did I recognize any of them,
one is a health news site with content written by journalists, leading me to believe these are
credible partners.
 Navigatingparenthood.com: This domain is a blog ran by a postpartum
doula and mother who shares ideas and stories about products, home design, and birthing with
parents of young children—prime candidates for Sun Basket customers. On the side bar of the
site, several accreditation type symbols exist, one naming Navigating Parenthood a
Wayfair.com featured blogger, leading me to believe this is a high quality link.
 Foodboxhq.com: Food Box HQ is a website ran by a family of consumers
who, per their site, are dedicated to reviewing and rating the variety of services currently in the
meal kit industry to help viewers find those best for them. I find this link to be of high quality, as
it provides links to several credible sources, including Reader’s Digest, that have mentioned
Food Box HQ in articles. Food Box HQ has featured Sun Basket in posts comparing its services
to other top competitors as well.
o Restricted domains: Restricted domains include those sources only certain
entities can approve. To create or contribute to a website with a restricted domain, one must be
connected with a certain agency, like a government branch or university. Examples of restricted
domains include those ending with .gov, .edu, and .mil. Understanding restricted domains helps
when determining backlink quality because links from these domains generally contain much
more credible or reliable information, ensured to come from an accredited organization, etc. of

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some sort. Anyone and everyone has the capability to put out content on a .com domain,
however. As noted above, neither site has any links from restricted domains in their top 100
according to Small SEO Tools.
o Authority: According to SEMrush, Sun Basket has an authority score of 52 and
Home Chef has an authority score of 55. Home Chef’s score totals higher than Sun Basket’s for
several reasons. Sun Basket falls behind Home Chef by about 6,500 backlinks in addition to
Home Chef having over 1.6 million more monthly visits than Sun Basket. With both of these
being factored in to the authority score, it gives reason to why Home Chef’s score is higher.
Most other factors, including domain score, trust score, referring domains, and keywords used to
calculate this score were relatively similar between both domains.
TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
 Visit Analysis
o Definitions: In the world of web analytics, a visit is the name given to a series of page
requests from the same unique visitor in short amount of time, or session. Unique visitor refers to a
particular IP address that has accessed a site at least once within a specific period. Going even more in
depth, the average number of visits per unique visitor during the given time frame is known as visits per
unique visitor. All three of these analytics are shown in the chart above.
o Comparison: After calculations, I found that the competing company exceeds Sun
Basket in number of monthly visits by over one million. Home Chef also draws in over one million more
unique visitors per month than Sun Basket.
SunBasket.com HomeChef.com
Avg. Monthly Visits 726.62 k 1.88 mil
Unique Visitors 433 k 1.5 mil
Visits Per Unique Visitor 1.7 1.3

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Tying in my research from my comparison of both sites and the fact that Home Chef has so
many more backlinks than does Sun Basket,I feelas if it only makes sense that Home Chef would have
more monthly visits. This bigger number of backlinks creates more pathways into the site compared to
that of Sun Basket.
When it comes to visits per unique visitor, Sun Basket actually has a higher number than
Home Chef. One possible explanation for this to happen would be because SunBasket.com features much
more engaging content, giving the visitors more of a reason to want to go back and visit the site again,
compared to HomeChef.com.
Engagement Analysis
Sunbasket.com HomeChef.com Web Averages
Bounce Rate % 33.9% 45.31% 40.5%
Pages per Visit 4.30 4.29 4.6
Average visit duration 5 min. 9s 1 min. 40s 1 min. 30.4 s
o Bounce Rate: Bounce rate refers to the number of people who leave a site after visiting
only a single page, like the home page for example. This is typically expressed as a percentage. Almost
thirty-four percent of Sun Basket’s visitors exit the site before ever moving on to another page, compared
to more than 45% of those who visit HomeChef.com.
o Sun Basket’s bounce rate is 6.5% lower than the web average bounce rate. I speculate the
value content on the main page contributes to this lower than average bounce rate—people enter the site
and see the engaging content, like meal plans available and information on the food sources, and go
farther into the site rather than exiting.
o Pageviews per Visit & Average Visit Duration: Pageviews can be described as simply
as the number of pages viewed by visitors to a site, while the amount of time total spent on that website is
known as average visit duration. While the two competing sites have almost identical average pageviews

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per visit, their average visit durations differ greatly. Sun Basket’s visitors spend more than three times the
amount of time on the site per session compared to those visiting HomeChef.com
o In terms of average pageviews per visit, both sites have numbers very near that of the
web average. These numbers on their own are neither good nor bad, because they are so similar. If you
factor in average visit duration, however, a lot more can be taken from this. Visitors spend over five
minutes per session on SunBasket.com, compared to only 100 seconds on Home Chef. Breaking this
down, Sun Basket’s visitors, on average,spend about 76 seconds on each page, while visitors at the
competitor’s site only spend around 38 seconds per page. I would contribute this to Sun Basket having
many more engagement opportunities to its site than just purchasing meals—it includes videos, blog
posts, information about its farms, and more. Home Chef, on the other hand, does not have quite as
engaging features to lead viewers into spending more time there.
I would say Sun Basket’s average visit duration is very good, especially compared to that of the
competing site and the web’s average overall. I was not surprised to see Sun Basket has a high visit
duration, due to the site’s value of content I have noticed while completing this analysis. The content
under the Explore Sun Basket section at the bottom of the site likely helps to increase visit duration. As
visitors engage with this value content—a variety of videos, recipes, tips on kitchen basics, and blog posts
by the company’s dietician—they are probably spending severalminutes on the pages at a time. The
Regular customers likely spend a while on the Menu as they make their decisions of what meals to order
each month, contributing to both pageviews and a higher visit duration. While browsing the Menu,
viewers can engage by clicking on each meal to see the recipe, a list of what comes in its box, nutrition
information, and even similar recipes.
From the main page to Values to Organic Food, to Menu, it is as if severalinternal links exist on
each page help lead the visitor deeper into or throughout the site. The number of interior links that exist
on the Menu, as well as throughout the site elsewhere,could contribute to why SunBasket.com has a good
number of pageviews per visit. These links provide ways for viewers to further engage with Sun Basket’s

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content without ever wanting to leave the site.

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Sun Basket’s much higher visit duration and such lower bounce rate than those of Home Chef
leads me to draw the assumption viewers find Sun Basket’s content much more engaging. For having
what I found to be slightly less engaging content than that of Home Chef’s,which offers a customer
review video as well as customer Instagram posts on the main page, these numbers are quite surprising.
 Engagement Improvement Recommendation: Something that is missing completely from Sun
Basket is an image or video displaying what a Sun Basket package actually looks like on the inside. On
the Values page, a video exists that introduces customers to Sun Basket,although it is narrated and only

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shows glimpses of Sun Basket contents,as pictured below.
Sun Basket’s main page focuses largely on proving to the viewer that it offers the most
natural, clean, and delicious foods grown using the most sustainable practices and delivered in the most
eco-friendly packaging. I understand all of these may be large parts of what makes Sun Basket stand out
from competitors. However,I feel as if first-time visitors would be more to likely spend a longer amount
of time on the site if there was a video spotlighting a family of satisfied customers as they prepare dinner
straight from the box and discuss the reasons why they enjoy Sun Basket’s service. After all, one of the
most influential things when contemplating on a purchase can often be customer reviews.
While a very simple idea, I feelas if including a video of this sort, much like can be seen on
HelloFresh.com, (pictured below) would increase engagement because almost all first-time visitors to the
site would watch the video, contributing to a higher visit duration. In addition to this, it could do wonders
in actually proving to unconvinced visitors that this service really is something they need in their life.
Seeing the juicy, brightly colored fresh foods being put on a fork and going into someone’s mouth would
be the perfect way to show viewers just how good Sun Basket’s meals are as well. Once viewers decide to
buy, they would be back on the site within the next month to select their new meals, so this would insure

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future visits as well.