DEE2SEE

The best DTC websites, reviewed by a creative ecommerce UX lover

Made By Real Boomers: Gen Z Water

Retro has become a thing now – from Vacation’s 80’s total look to Final Boss Sour pixelated visual gaming language, there’s something about going back to naive times that comes as a countermove to the all AI, super digital, cold and emotionally almost non-relatable time we all live in.

Gen Z Water (even the name is brilliant), however, takes this even further to the point I had to check if this brand and website are real. Turns out I’m not the only one, by the way, as this is the first question on their FAQ page and a subtitle on their Instagram account.

GEN Z Water FAQ page, Experience the FAQs, answering if the brand is real

Gen Z Water Brand has been selling real aluminium bottles filled with real reverse-osmosis water since 2021, so yes, it IS a real product. But their website is all in the language of super-early internet days, like a GeoCities website from the early 2000’s – and as a proud Gen X member that was actually there when it all happened, I can tell you that this, my friends, is how it all looked.

Every Pixel Counts

Early internet graphics were a crazy combination of pixelated, rotating and ridiculous animated gifs, bad typography, embossed buttons, patterned backgrounds with ugly textures, bad clip art, site’s visitors counter and in general a real lack of taste. But is this how it really was, and every new gif or badge you could embed in your website was super exciting and new.

GEN Z Water homepage hero with three bottles and retro internet graphics

Back to Gen Z Water. It really takes a while to understand what the website is all about. Yes, the bottles are shown on the homepage’s hero section, but the elements surrounding them are so surprising, that makes the whole experience boil down to WTF (but in a good way!), sparking curiosity and awe at the visual language commitment. I wonder how someone who was raised with sleek online visuals, videos, etc, experiences the website.

GEN Z Water product grid, embossed Y2K buttons on a starfield background under the blunt tabloid claim "THE BEST WATER ON EARTH"

Even when you do scroll to the products section on the homepage, you’re still not 100% sure what is it that you see. Made by Real Boomers badge? Do Not Click button? Of course I clicked.

Plain Water Included

GEN Z Water size reference gag, bottle dimensions measured against a flexing seagull mascot instead of a normal scale

Once you realize it is a real ecommerce site, you go to the product page, to find out the same silliness is kept, with the same earnest tone going even when it’s just trying to state a bottle size, measuring sixteen fluid ounces against “the width of Buff Seagal’s bicep” instead of a normal object, the kind of pun that only works when it’s given the whole page instead of a footnote.

GEN Z Water looping clip-art gif for refillability, a cowboy-hatted frog on a frog stack, no explanation offered for the pairing

Refillability gets its own caption too, “A Bottle You Can Refill,” with no attempt made to explain why the graphic underneath it looks nothing like a bottle, because by this point on the site that disconnect has become the whole point rather than an oversight. Even the plainness of the water gets a dedicated line, “Plain Water Included,” which might be the most literal piece of packaging copy ever written, landing somewhere between the driest joke on the site and the most honest one.

GEN Z Water looping clip-art gif pairing a hydrant-spraying Dalmatian with the literal-minded line "Plain Water Included"

You’ve Reached the End.

Yes, the internet looked like this back in the day. All ugly HTML and buttons with leftover pixels that you couldn’t make transparent. Gen Z Water’s footer is pure delight – first, the duplicated animated shoes gif, and the “Thank you very much” sentence, followed by these ugly buttons – which have to be there, linked to social accounts, legal and other content. And then the visitors counter and, Netscape Now badge and, Oh My God, the Neopets badge! Neopets, for all of you born in this millennium, was IS an illustrated online world purchased by Viacom in 2005, that was is full of mythical cute creatures you had to play games for, to feed them or upgrade their homes. It is still online, with its early 2000s look!! It was so addictive and I just loved it! The button isn’t clickable, but just seeing it there brought back a wave of nostalgia. It really makes no difference if it’s active or not. And the I’m online status indicator. This is the bedrock of everything and I just love the fact that the brand goes all the way with the creative decision.

Human Vs. Aluminum

We know every DTC brand now has a comparison list on their homepage or product page, and Gen Z Water has one as well, but this one compares Gen Z Water to… well, Gen Z humans. As you can see, the humans are not made of aluminum but they do save the world. I also love the copy “Any resemblance between Gen Z Water brand and Gen Z the Human Generation is purely coincidental. Consult the Table below for more information”. At no point does any of the copy step outside the bit to explain the joke to you, which is exactly what makes it land.

For People Who Never Owned a Flip Phone

GEN Z Water About page, VHS-poster style type over a plain blue field, framing the water as generation-agnostic since "1995-????"

Even the most standard pages of every website get a different angle on GEN Z Water’s website. The About page has the same early internet days blue background with pixelated lines, with a dolphin gif and a brilliant text: “Plain Water, We Want Gen Z to Buy It, 1995-????, For People Who Never Owned a Flip Phone, Made by Real Boomers, Flavorless Transparent Liquid,” a date range that trails off into question marks instead of landing anywhere, and an upfront admission that the people behind a brand built for a younger audience are not, themselves, that audience.

GEN Z Water Sustainability page, textured paper background and earnest serif headline, "ALUMINUM: THE MIRACLE METAL"

The Sustainability page shows real information about aluminum, but the design is still crazy, not to mention the animated gifs. Even the contact page keeps the tone going, calling itself the “Electronic Message Portal” and inviting you to “input any Question you may have. Do not hesitate,” which might be the most formal a website has ever asked someone not to be shy.

GEN Z Water contact page styled as an "ELECTRONIC MESSAGE PORTAL," glossy early-web form fields

By the time you’ve clicked on every button and link on the site to find more and more of that crazy attitude, you’re hooked. I just want my Flying Toasters screensaver back.

Takeaways:

  1. Look at your least visited page and ask whether your brand’s actual voice ever made it there. The FAQ and the contact form are usually where personality goes quiet, since nobody pictures a customer reading them for fun, but a tone that only shows up on the pages people screenshot is marketing, while a tone that survives the pages people skim in ten seconds is closer to an actual brand.

  2. A spec doesn’t need a chart to land, it needs a caption confident enough to replace one. Size, refillability, and flavor all got communicated here through captions instead of bullet points, and every one of them still answers the real question underneath the joke, so before reaching for a dimensions table, it’s worth asking whether the number itself could carry the punchline instead.

Dee2See by Lihi Lothan reviews DTC ecommerce experiences for brand managers and growth teams. We look at what happens between “I’m interested” and “I bought it.”

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