Case study

Focusing website content through user research

Project type

Project type

UI/UX design

UI/UX design

Personal project

Personal project

Client

Client

Personal project

Personal project

Year

Year

2023

2023

My role

My role

UI/UX Designer

UI/UX Designer

Contribution

Contribution

User research
UI/UX design

User research
UI/UX design

Brief

UniCafe has always had an active online presence, enabling customers to view crucial information such as menus and services on the go. However, their 2020 brand renewal and subsequent release of a browser-based web app had unexpected consequences as the overall user experience suffered from lack of consistency and strategic content curation.

As a personal project, I examined the UX of the existing offerings and created a proposal for improved UX on UniCafe's home page. The proposal would improve task completion rate and engage the correct target audiences.

UniCafe has always had an active online presence, enabling customers to view crucial information such as menus and services on the go. However, their 2020 brand renewal and subsequent release of a browser-based web app had unexpected consequences as the overall user experience suffered from lack of consistency and strategic content curation.

As a personal project, I examined the UX of the existing offerings and created a proposal for improved UX on UniCafe's home page. The proposal would improve task completion rate and engage the correct target audiences.

Background

UniCafe's rebranding in 2020 came with several newsworthy changes to their services and improvements to both online and offline services. As part of the project, they renewed their homepage, enhancing the way in which information about the menus in their multiple restaurants were displayed. The new system incorporated colour coding to indicate meal types and price ranges, iconography for allergies and dietary restrictions, and other improvements.

However, customer feedback indicated the menu was in fact extremely cumbersome to view. Especially mobile users found it difficult as large card elements took a lot of space on the screen, requiring users scroll back and forth on the page to see menu items and change restaurants.

As a result, UniCafe released a browser-based web app focusing only on displaying menus. The new service was well received for its clear UI and well-thought UX; as well as future scalability. However, this created a rift between UniCafe's online services: who were the different sites really for?

Business impact

Higher engagement rates would be more likely to lead to conversions. Redefining the target audience would greatly impact user retention as well. On a whole, it would also make it easier to allocate resources to website management, and make it easier to use the website in designated marketing campaigns.

Project goal

Understanding the users' pain points caused by overlapping services, creating a prototype with improved navigation and content hierarchy

Challenges

Examining the different services it was clear the lack of focus and "quick fixes" were building up, creating problems on the long run. Analytics and tracking, such as HotJar, were already showing users were struggling to navigate between the different services. On top of this, UniCafe's other offerings such as catering services were buried under the issues on the front page.

01

Who are we designing for?

02

Supporting the various needs of a large audience

01

Who are we designing for?

Existing target audiences

UniCafe's communications and operational strategy featured several target audiences that were separated mainly by their needs versus UniCafe's service offering. Initially, these audiences were delineated by analysing visitor profiles, feedback, and sales data; the same target audiences were used when designing the renewed website.


  1. University and UAS students (lunch and campaigns)

  2. University of Helsinki staff (lunch and catering services)

  3. Existing and potential partners & media (business information, services, news)

  4. Other lunchtime customers such as nearby office workers, construction workers, conference visitors, etc.


Identifying the problem

These user groups closely align with the target audience of the web app - lunch customers - which in turn gives rise to two new challenges:


  1. Competition between platforms: UniCafe offers two services featuring comparable content directed at identical user groups. This complexity hampers campaign preparation, as identical information is expected on both platforms. Additionally, the allocation of marketing funds becomes intricate, as both platforms essentially vie for the same budget and user base. Foretelling user behaviour through analytics becomes intricate, as users may interact differently with each platform based on their respective structures and available information.


  2. Content clutter: Managing and maintaining content becomes challenging due to a diverse user base with disparate needs. This challenge is particularly evident on the homepage, where information is dispersed and, in some cases, doesn't seamlessly integrate into the navigation. Moreover, analytics indicate that a significant portion of users only explores the front page, primarily driven by the menu feed, making the establishment of effective conversion points a formidable task.


User testing and pain points

Conducting a user test and analyzing feedback revealed numerous pain points and instances of task abandonment. For example, users attempting to view the menu would inadvertently navigate to subpages due to a misleading header. Additionally, sending feedback proved cumbersome, with users either overlooking text links or becoming frustrated with the extended lists of contact information.


02

Supporting the various needs of a large audience

Redesign approach

In response to these findings, I re-examined the target audience, and based my redesign on the redefined user groups. I focused on the mobile site, given its higher user engagement.

Drawing insights from UniCafe's customer satisfaction surveys and analytics of both the website and web application, I redefined the target audience with a strategic emphasis on users whose needs extended beyond the capabilities of the web application alone. For instance, while students and staff could access menus on the web application, it failed to cater to individuals seeking information on UniCafe's catering services or ongoing campaigns.

This realignment involved categorising users based on their engagement with our services rather than solely their association with the university or interest in food.

The refined audience segments are as follows:


  1. Catering service customers: This category encompasses university staff and broadens the original audience to include potential customers within UniCafe's service area.

  2. Existing and potential partners & media: The homepage serves as a pivotal platform for disseminating corporate information, providing contact details of business and marketing representatives, and hosting links to public media banks. I retained this group without alterations, as the homepage remains the sole viable platform for such comprehensive content.

  3. Customers seeking campaign information: This user group, likely UniCafe patrons, social media followers, or those within the target audience of a marketing campaign, finds the homepage conducive for accessing details on competitions, rules, privacy policies, and other pertinent campaign-related information. If a campaign involves visiting a restaurant for lunch, directing users to the web application after viewing campaign details facilitates more straightforward measurement of conversions.


This refined categorisation facilitated a clearer identification of information causing clutter and complicating site navigation:


  1. Acknowledging the redundancy of menus on the homepage, I completely removed them, freeing up space for other critical information.

  2. Shifting the focus away from menus enabled a more effective promotion of catering services.

  3. Navigation clarity improved, as users seeking restaurant menus were promptly directed to the web application, reducing confusion around items in the navigation.


03

Conclusion


Following the implementation of these changes, subsequent user testing demonstrated a significantly improved user experience. The previous points of abandonment were successfully addressed, streamlining tasks and enhancing overall user satisfaction.



In conclusion, clarifying the target audiences helped create a more focused, consistent experience that would not have a negative effect on UniCafe's revenue - on the contrary, customers interested in services geared towards their needs would have an easier time navigating the website or web app, which in turn is more likely to lead to a conversion.

More Articles

Read all articles

User-friendly visualisation of hyperspectral data and insights

Agricultural SaaS platform for Kuva Space

User-friendly visualisation of hyperspectral data and insights

Agricultural SaaS platform for Kuva Space

User-friendly visualisation of hyperspectral data and insights

Agricultural SaaS platform for Kuva Space