Compare their visual design, website features and homepage content
- Identify the features Komeeda lacks:
- Book the whole table (EatWith) / Private Event (Feastly)
- Meals with a story (Feastly)
Komeeda | Discover Food Experience
Redesign the platform to increase daily active users and revenue
My Role:
UX/UI Designer
Teammates:
2 PM + 4 Engineers
Duration:
Seven Months
Komeeda.com is a marketplace to discover unique food events, taste exciting new foods, discover new restaurants, and interact with other interesting guests, in addition to the passionate chefs who want to share their stories.
As UX/UI Designer, I worked with the PM and engineering team to redesign and deliver the web v2.0, which achieves DAU (+ 676%), Transaction (+ 223%), Avg Monthly Orders (+184%), Avg. Session Duration (+41.75%), Bounce Rate (- 22.46%), and Exit Rate (- 34.82%). I spent two months designing and five months assisting the engineering team with implementation.
Daily Active User
+
100
%
Avg. Monthly Orders
+
100
%
Customer
+
100
%
Avg. Session Duration
+
%
Bounce Rate
-
%
Exit Rate
-
%
Background
When I joined the team, Komeeda is already quite popular on Instagram, while its website had relatively low traffic and high bounce rate. The team wanted to redesign and rebrand it, attracting more customers to purchase event tickets and increasing brand loyalty.
Problem: users are not staying on the website or coming back.
USER TESTING OF INITIAL WEBSITE
To find out the reasons for the problem, three user testing sessions were conducted with Komeeda’s target audience. Users pointed out they don’t know exactly what the website is about, and the color and layout are not what they expected to be a food-related website.
"The color makes me feel like this is a music site...the events information are not organized."
User Research
I further analyzed the research data gathered by the marketing team to find out who the users are and their preference. I found users love meeting new people and trying new food at intimate food events, while afraid of feeling awkward if fellow attendees don’t socialize. They are price-sensitive and valuing offering, experience, and convenience.
My analysis revealed the challenges was to make users feel welcomed and to ensure that they fully understood the value of Komeeda.
User Persona
I created a persona based on the user research and testimonials, which helped me communicate my findings with the team. The persona also ensured that users’ goals and frustrations were at the front of my mind as I progressed with the design.
Competitive Analysis
I chose and compared the two major competitors which has similar services and business models with Komeeda, aiming to find out what’s unique about Komeeda and what its website should improve.
I identified Komeeda doesn't have table booking feature and a blog to tell stories.
Condense the USP (unique selling point) of Komeeda
- Chef/Host interaction
- Minimum of six different menu items
- Enjoy a meal with awesome people in a fun setting
Mood Board
I created the mood board to set the tone and communicate with the founder about the design direction I’m going, also to gather design inspirations for myself.
The founder and PM are very happy to see the mood board, because they knew I understand their goals and visions and started fully trusting me to complete the tasks.
The brand images we want to deliver are “Fun”, “Delightful” and “Welcoming”.
NEW SITEMAP
Based on the finding from user testing and competitive analysis, I proposed some new features to better serve users and promote the business.
I restructured the sitemap to accommodate new features.
Iteration
We have been through several iterations in terms of the color, structure, content, and labeling. How to better-using space is one of our major focuses. For example, we decided getting rid of the fullscreen landing page, so users can filter and browse the events once they land on the website.
Komeeda should serve as a convenient tool for users to discover food experience.
Design - Homepage
The UI color was changed from dark purple to pink based on several iterations and user feedback. The current color is the one favored by most users (7 out of 10) we interviewed.
Clearly communicate the value of Komeeda, display social proof to gain trust from visitors and direct them to take actions on the homepage.
Design - Event page
More info was added to the event card, such as the price, restaurant, chef, snippet of the menu.
I proposed adding an easy way for users to submit request of table booking and event catering , which actually brings new revenue to the company.
Design - Event Detail Page
Display the menu as the format of paper menu, add a section for the introductions of restaurant and chef, where sharing some chef’s stories upfront.
Our favorite part of the page is displaying the menu actually in a "menu", so users can easily catch the infomation about what they can expect from the meal.
Design - Restaurant Profile
Add featured chef, cuisines, customer review and more photos to the restaurant profile. So users can know more about a specific restaurant, and restaurants can better showcasing themselves.
Make it a place for restaurants to showcase their featured chef, food and reviews, which helps Komeeda attract more restaurants to join.
Design - MY PROFILE
From the user research, I noticed our users are price-sensitive and favoring interesting experience. So I discussed with PM to add loyalty program and a foodie test within their customer profile to engage users. The foodie test will also be a way for us to know more about users, so the marketing team can send personalized promotions in email campaign accordingly.
I proposed a loyalty program to motivate users to come back, and a "foodie test" to get to know users and provides personalized event recommendations.
Design - MY Events
I found users value the “convenience” a lot from the user research, and participants of user testing said time availability is one of the most important deciding factors whether they will attend an event. Therefore, I added a calendar for the events where shows booked events, favorite event and other upcoming events with different signifiers, so it is more convenient for users to plan.
Allow users to browse "booked", "favorite" and other upcoming events on the calendar while having clear differtiation.
Design - MY Favorites
I added a function for users to save the events they feel interested while haven’t committed to attending, where they can easily check the menu and RSVP.
A place to check all "favorite" events and easily take actions.
Design - Promo Code
Since our users are socialized and price-sensitive, I discussed with the PM and decided to provide a referral (affiliate) program for them to invite friends and earn the platform credit for both of them.
Motivating users to invite their friends to join Komeeda.
Design - BLOG
Based on competitive analysis, blog is one of the things we don’t have while our competitors do. Besides, I noticed Komeeda have a lot of videos, photos, and stories from the events, which are perfect resources for blogging. Therefore, I recommended to add a blog section on the website.
Tell the story of Komeeda events and establish credibility.
Implementation
After I finalized the design with the PM, I worked with the engineering team to implement the design by presenting the design to the team, providing UI elements, conducting usability testing, debugging, and designing for new requirements during the development process. It took 5 months to implement the design for new Komeeda.com.
Some alignment, full-width and responsive issues are identified and presented to the engineering team to fix during the process.
Debugging:
One of the most important bugs I identified and helped to fix is the full-width issue. Originally the engineering team built the site with every row in full-width, which looks awkward on a large screen. Then we assigned those elements a fixed width to solve the problem.
Other bugs include reminding them the uploaded “Chef photo” has to be square, otherwise it won’t be cropped into circle properly and shortening the gap between the two “menus”, etc.
Results
After three months, we gladly see the dramatic results from Google Analytics.
Daily Active User
+
100
%
Avg. Monthly Orders
+
100
%
Customer
+
100
%
Avg. Session Duration
+
%
Bounce Rate
-
%
Exit Rate
-
%
Preliminary USER TESTING
When the design is partly implemented at komeeda.com, I conducted several user testing both in-person and online. The testing verifies the design successfully communicates the brand image of Komeeda (“social”, “welcoming”, “inspiring”, “positive”, etc.), also identifies some usabilities issues that could be improved in the future.
“The website looks good, font is nice, and structurally pleasing”
Major Finding
All the participants love the theme color, no matter what their gender is. They consider it is “a good-looking website”, “well-organized” and “structurally pleasing”.
What surprises me most is, instead of clicking one of the listed events on the homepage, all of them tend to use the filters and search bar to search events first. I also found two usability issues in this process:
- Some of the participants are not aware of the “search input” is optional, so after they selected the filters, they still tried to put some word in the input field even if just meaningless word like “food” (PS: it’s meaningless because every event on the website is related to food).
- When there are no matched events with what users are searching for. The result page only informs users there are no matched events, although in a funny way (“The event you’re looking for has been eaten!”). The best practices will be having some other suggested events for users so the platform don’t lose these potential customers.
Place search bar before filters to avoid misunderstanding.
When there is no event matching user’s search inquiry, provide suggestions and other options.
Formal USER TESTING
After conducting the first round of user testing by myself, I thought there is a need to test more and gain insights. By leveraging an opportunity of the Usability Theory and Practice class I took at Pratt Institute, I worked with 2 teammates and conducted 6 more formal moderated in-person user testing, with both existing customers (2) and novice users (4). Here are the presentation and full report. Six recommendations were provided to solve users’ initial confusion over Komeeda’s concept, ‘Events’ vs ‘Series’ distinction, discoverability of the ‘Referrals’ feature, and some interaction design issues.
Team Feedback
“Upon meeting Elise to begin the redesign of our website, I knew I had the right person working on this project. We discussed my visions, features, tools, and inspirations for the new website. That evening she shared a fifteen page visual proposal and a week later the first iteration was submitted, and the only iteration needed. We now have a new, beautiful, appealing, sexy website awaiting launch. Her work truly puts a smile on my face.”
"Tasked with the re-design of our website, Elise forward-thinking designs that gave us room to grow. She delivered in a timely manner, and met with us multiple times to iterate on everything. Ultimately, we ended up with enough small details in the designs, that Elise ended up the mastermind of several new features for the website! Once we implemented the designs, compliments rolled in left and right about how amazing the site looked."
“Elise constantly wowed me with her superb design skills while we were working together on Komeeda.com – providing direction that is clean, visually pleasing, and most importantly from a web developer’s standpoint, efficient to execute in HTML/CSS/JS. I really look forward to finding further opportunities to work with her again.”
CONCLUSION & LEARNING
Komeeda is one of my earliest projects, where I am so lucky to meet the great team. When working with the engineering team to implement the design, I got the chance to face some challenges from putting design to develop, such as setting the max width of widgets and solving responsive issues, which is a great learning experience.
“Fun” is one of the team spirits and brand images of Komeeda. From this project, I also learned how to use color and elements to make it “fun”, “welcoming” instead of “boring”. I was invited to the events several times to taste great food and mingle with people – definitely a fun food experience!
It is also glad to see the design is making a real influence on the business. According to the metrics and user feedback, the new design successfully brings more customers and keeps them more engaged. One co-founder told me the newly-added table booking features is actually bringing them some new business, which I am could not be more excited to hear about.