Eat Offbeat is a social impact food company that offers catering and meal boxes made by former refugee and immigrant chefs currently living in New York.
Before the 2020 pandemic, Eat Offbeat was mainly a catering company. After the pandemic hit, they had to reimagine their business and implement changes to their website as quickly as possible. That left them with no time for testing or research before implementation.
The main goals were to:
- Understand user pain points and needs
- Redesign the website and flow according to our findings
I was responsible for the user research and user experience. I worked within a tech team of developers, a product designer, and a UI designer.
I started off by conducting research to find out more about the competitors in the market, testing their flow, highlighting what is working for them and what we can also do better.
Before I started, the company had instrumented its website with Hotjar and Google Analytics. Hotjar provides recordings of users journeys including clicks, mouse movements, and time spent within each page. Google Analytics compiles aggregate statistics about user behavior such as conversion rates.
- A pattern can be seen in users leaving the flow to go back to the FAQs
- A high bounce rate of 64 % on the dish-selection page
- The average time spent on the homepage is more than 1 minute
- The behavior flow showed many clicks back and forth between meal box order and dish selection.
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I structured the user test into two parts, recording both screen and audio using Loom:
- In part one, the user was asked to scroll through the homepage and give their impression of what they think the product is and any thoughts that come to mind.
- In part two, the user was asked to complete a task: place an order (of their choosing), and checkout with the name and address I had given them.
- “First impression of the website, is that it provides ingredients for cooking”
- “I feel like I want to go back to the FAQs because I am a bit confused even when I am ordering”
- “It would have been nice to know from the beginning that they don’t deliver to my area”
- “I am confused about the serving size”
- “Why are dishes already selected for me?”
- “The amount of information about the dish is very minimal"
I also spoke with Eat Offbeat’s customer service representative as she is in direct contact with actual customers and knows their pain points and needs.
"People reach out for much more detail, especially those who are very healthy and want to know exactly what they are getting."
After doing my research, and before moving on to the next phase, I wanted to share the insights with the team and stakeholders. I hosted a workshop to get everyone engaged and to brainstorm for ideas together. The three-hour workshop was conducted on Zoom and Miro and was split into different exercises:
As a warm-up exercise, I asked each person to write down words that come to mind when they think of Eat Offbeat.
I had already written down the insights from my research in Miro. I then split the participants into two teams and asked them to group the insights into clusters and give a title to each cluster.
- HMW make menus clearer on the homepage → clear big images and short descriptions
- HMW help new visitors on the site understand what the product is as quickly as possible → clearly stating what we do, and explaining in a concise way what they can expect before clicking on CTA
- HMW clarify delivery zones upfront → ask about it from the beginning of the process
- HMW appeal to the health conscious without having detailed nutritional information → show list of ingredients +tags for low-card, high protein etc.
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