Radika Culinary Project

Founded by two female Mediterranean chefs Ecenaz and Esra, Radika Culinary Project offers three distinct services: catering, pop-up events, and selling homemade sauces. Their short term plan is to focus on bringing fine dining to customers’ own kitchens and hosting pop-up dining events. In the mid and long term, they plan to package and sell their homemade gourmet sauces.

The problem

Since fine catering and pop-up dining events are not a widely known concept, the owners are concerned that people might not fully understand the quality of their services and may treat Radika as a regular catering company. They are looking for a way to emphasize their competitive edge.

Founders of Radika want to convert their website visits into leads by providing a simple inquiry form and a phone number.

In the future, they also want to integrate a small online storefront into their website to sell their canned gourmet sauces.

Research goal

"Discover the driving forces that influence people when they research and book catering companies, to define a responsive website that provides a clear and valuable experience to visitors and convert them into leads."

I focused my research around two areas:

• user interviews to discover important factors that influence potential customers, and
• market research and website analysis to discover how the direct and indirect competitors are approaching this problem in their websites.

Findings from market research were quite interesting:

• Only one direct competitor has a properly designed website, but does not have a clear CTA.
• Only one competitor has separate photo galleries built for each major past event on their website.
• Only one direct competitor has a professionally written About section, which also includes a backstory of the chef to build trust. Others use informal language with generic info.
• All competitors include a mobile number as a contact number. Only half of competitors have online forms.
• Competitors who only have an Instagram account did not utilize Story Highlights to show off past events, and their photos do not appear to be taken by a professional.

Here are some of the findings from interviewing 5 people who have worked with catering companies in the past.

• 2 out of 5 participants searched for catering companies from Instagram accounts of event organizers and wedding photographers, while 3 participants found catering companies via Google search.
• When asked whether they would work with a brand new catering company, 1 participant said they would never work with a new company, and another participant said they would never work with a company that had no references. The remaining 3 participants said they would choose the company if the chefs or the menu had an interesting background.
• All participants prioritize the quality and uniqueness of the food when selecting a company, then evaluate the prices.

Assumptions / risks

I assume that people make logical decisions or are aware of the influencing factors when hiring a catering company.

Because the client had built a website before, they had some ideas on what they want the website to include:

• Homepage
• About Us section
• Sample menu
• Enquiry form
• Explanation of Services: 1- Catering, 2- Events, 3-Shop(soon)

In addition to these required deliverables, I added gallery pages to showcase past events that will be used to impress customers in the future.

I created a Feature Roadmap to prioritize the essential features to work on, and leave the least important out of the project scope for the time being to meet the deadline.

Here is also the sitemap I’ve created which includes all the necessary pages I was planning to design.

The About Us section is placed within the homepage, since it’s the biggest factor Radika can utilize to convince prospective clients before having enough experience.

After a few successful events, it will leave its real estate to sophisticated photos from past events, the most valuable feature to win new clients.

I also planned the primary task flow of this website around a user who arrives at the homepage and learns about the company, services offered, and the story of its founders, then proceeds to check a sample menu, past events, and then fills out a contact form to inquire about booking for an event.

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I conducted remote monitored usability tests through Zoom. Here are some of the findings:

• Since the dishes are presented in a very unique way, all users had difficulty identifying the dishes in the gallery, e.g. one user thought the mushroom slice was sashimi.
• All participants expected to see a confirmation dialog after submitting their inquiry form, and 2 participants also expected to see an estimated time to get a callback.

I then created an affinity map to lay out the recommended fixes, coupled with a priority matrix to evaluate their cost vs. effect.

Here are some of the recommended solutions for the identified problems:

• Add a confirmation modal with details about callback to the contact form to be shown after it’s submitted.
• Add captions to dishes to help users understand what they are.
• Add a project scope to Past Events pages to provide more detail in a simple way.

Photos can make or break websites. Even during testing, people showed strong emotional responses to some images.

Users want to be informed and in control at each step of an interaction.

Sometimes it makes more sense to go with the second best solution, but you should still have a plan to implement the ideal solution.

Future steps to consider

Due to time limitations and the scope of the project brief, the following tasks are not completed:

• Even though the fixes to the design are very subtle, they still need another round of usability testing to confirm their effectiveness.
• The naming of the frames and components in Figma file do not follow a strict nomenclature (design debt). I have to revisit the file in the future to rename the frames before handing it off to a developer.