Creating a user-centric strategy for a food blogger
Freelance UX Designer for MaeLou Media
Creating a user-centric strategy for a food blogger
Oct 2019 - Jan 2020
About MaeLou Media's food blog
My client owned and managed food related websites focused on healthy lifestyle content.
After 6 years of rapid growth, my client was concerned about the longevity of her existing business strategy. She brought me onboard to investigate high bounce rates on one of her sites.
Rapid business growth
High bounce rates
Healthy lifestyle content
MaeLou Media's site portfolio prior to UX project
10% of users
spent less than 5 minutes
on the site
95% of users
continued to at least
one more site link
25% of users
left the site in the
first 30 seconds
Deep dive analysis of the current business
MaeLou Media's revenue was generated from paid advertisements based on the number of page views, click through ad links, and ad refreshes.
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I used a free heatmapping product called HotJar to analyze user behavior.
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I also produced a persona document for the typical user and then conducted in-depth interviews with 5 similar users. The goal of this research was to pinpoint what made a great experience when using online recipe food blog sites.
Creating a Persona
During interviews with my client, I discovered that users cared about speed and quality.
They wanted to quickly choose a recipe and also needed some reassurance that they would enjoy the food that was prepared.
They wanted food blogs to have quick page load times and appreciated sites that had visual queues that the food would taste good.
User ratings
Search bar
Nutritional information
Jump to recipe link
Appetizing imagery
New mobile layout
Based on user research and feedback collected, I developed a new mobile layout. This layout became the rough template for future MaeLou Media site development and blog improvements across the company's suite of sites.​
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I recommended removing features which were unused and visually amplify features that users clicked more often (such as the search feature, recipes listing, and top visited site links).
I also recommended bringing forward information and links that most benefited the user (such as a "jump to recipe" button, summarized nutritional stats about the recipe, and average user rating).
Updated mobile design
The result
The redesign of sites under the MaeLou Media portfolio lead to a dramatic increase in user traffic. My client acquired websites that took her company's reach to over 11 million users per month. By honing her business strategy, my client was able to focus on buying and flipping food blogs using a tried-and-true user interface template. Profits increased 1400% in under a year.
