Using research + information architecture to improve a site's usability
Project Background
My client for this project was a restaurant and catering company. The online ordering software used by this client was experiencing a high abandon rate, and was not being successfully used by customers to initiate the process of planning food for their events. Analytics indicated that there were likely problems with the ordering process, but without talking to and observing people using the site, the client did not know exactly where the biggest issues lay and what should be addressed in order to improve the customer experience and increase usage of the online tools.
To better understand the underlying issues, I recommended conducting background research combined with a usability study, as a means of more fully understanding how prospective customers perceived and interacted with the site.
Business Goals
- Uncover barriers to completing the online ordering process
- Identify ways to reduce cart abandons, improve conversion rates
Study Goals
- Understand target users’ mental model for ordering food for events
- How do they approach the process overall (offline and online)
- What questions do they have when visiting a website to plan their catering or personal chef experience?
- What thought process do they have / what do they expect to see on a website when trying to plan food for an event?
- Understand how users perceive the existing planning experience and catering software used on the website
- Does the current information architecture match what they’re looking for (do the prepared / chef / wedding categories make sense?)
- How do they navigate to the appropriate section to start planning? Can they find it easily?
- What obstacles or frustrations do they encounter when they begin to plan their menu? Where do they get stuck? When and why do they decide to abandon the process?
Identifying Subjects
I first conducted interviews with the restaurant / catering company owner, to better understand the primary types of customers they have. Based on that information, I created the following four provisional personas:
The business owner and I worked together to schedule a combination of remote testing sessions and interviews with customers representing these personas.
Research
I conducted a combination of online, asynchronous remote testing, telephone interviews, and some informal discussions. I examined 2 different topics:
- What do people think about and expect when planning catering services for an event?
- What do they think specifically of the site: can they locate information easily? Does the menu planning process make sense?
Findings
My findings are below. I recommended that the client address these changes in two phases:
Step 1: consolidate / reorganize the menu. This was the single biggest obstacle for testers who were trying to use the site to plan their food choices.
Step 2: change the overall flow and address consistency concerns. This is a bigger change, but would address the problems with circuitous and confusing navigation.
mindset
What do people think about when planning food for an event?
Main findings
Overall impression:
- People think the site is attractive and professional
- The personal chef concept is very appealing, and it’s described well on the services page
- During the initial impression test, 0/3 online testers realized that the company offers catering services
- Recommendation: update the design of the homepage so there’s a clear place to go for bistro / restaurant information, and a different place to go for catering services
Navigating through the site:
- People navigate in loops, get lost, don’t understand where they are.
- If someone is planning a wedding, they get confused if they end up browsing to another category of food like “cocktail party menu” - they think they might be in the wrong place, even though they could still order the food that’s displayed in the different category.
- Things are mixed together - if I want to just visit the restaurant, it feels odd to be shown a shopping cart rather than a traditional menu.
- Recommendation: change the navigation flow so people feel like they are in the “right” place and don’t question themselves. Create a clearer separation between restaurant and catering.
Using the food menu:
- People look at all sections of the food menu and don’t understand the categories.
- Categories don’t match how people want to browse / search.
- Recommendation: reorganize the menu so it aligns with how people think about their food choices. Possibly ask them up front how many people they want to serve, and automatically adjust all their selections and prices accordingly (this idea should be tested before it’s implemented.) Consider adding sample menus with pricing.
Bugs
- Can’t add salads to cart from menu > salads page. There are similar issues with other Bistro items.
- “Start planning now” button on homepage - form doesn’t load on mobile device
Inconsistencies
- Pricing and quantities should be standardized - sometimes things are listed as pint/quart/etc, sometimes it says “feeds 8-10,” sometimes you enter a quantity of 1 per person.
- I keep discovering new variations of things - for example with the clambake it asks you to “add to cart for quote” rather than just showing pricing. Allison said she was asked to provide credit card information before getting a quote. All of these are potential barriers to conversion, so if the process can be simplified for users, that would be ideal.
- Similar looking parts of the site may direct users to the contact form, to the menu, or to the services page. This contributes to some of the circuitous navigation.
- Recommendation: standardize these items where possible.
