Chef Leon C Brunson Website UX Case Study
Chef Leon C Brunson
Redesign Tallahassee, Florida's chef's website, to highlight his culinary art and catering services.
Redesign Tallahassee, Florida's chef's website, to highlight his culinary art and catering services.
Chef Leon C Brunson is a young and talented chef in Tallahassee, FL. You can see his bigger-than-life character in how he interacts with people in his community and his passion for culinary arts. He is quickly becoming one of the most highly sought-after chefs in the Florida Panhandle.
The project's objective is to redesign the website to automate the leads and improve the website's conversion. We will add and integrate other applications to track and have the ability to communicate better with Chef Leon's prospective customers.
The previous website didn't have a solid structure, and the message was all over the place. So the primary strategy for this project is to organize the information and highlight Chef Leon's services with supporting social proof from previous customers and media publications.
To identify our ideal customers, we researched and analyzed the local market. We looked at three competing business types: private chefs, restaurants, and catering companies. We also looked at businesses with similar ideal customers from us that we can collaborate with to explore future opportunities.
We created four user personas (primary and secondary) that reflect our ideal customers. The two primary personas are the clients (they need Chef Leon's service), and the two secondary personas are the followers (they're interested in Chef Leon's online community involvement). These personas allow us to provide tailored content and a value-first strategy.
After identifying our ideal clients, we designed their journey for conversion. The journey is a series of steps that meet each criterion needed for conversion, like providing value, market positioning and establishing trust.
The design of each page revolves around the content. We researched important keywords and built the content around them to optimize the page for Google. We also ensured we added website features that improve the user's experience and add value to the business.
Each page consists of a series of sections that serve a particular purpose. Designing the structure of each section helps us stay focused on the goal and not get distracted by the aesthetic. We later used Chef Leon's existing logo and similar design features, color schemes, and fonts to expand the brand identity.
A big part of the user's journey is how the user interacts with each page. We use an interaction strategy to design each page section to convey a particular message. For example, we use one area only to show social proof or provide information on Chef Leon's catering services. Doing so allows us to be intentional with the design and improve our conversion.
We built 11 unique static pages and one dynamic page with room for expansion in the future. We developed the website to be very easy to manage with continuous backup and no updates from the user required.
Content is king, so we made sure they were intentional and optimized for the search engine (SEO). We also integrated 3rd party applications like Google Analytics to track user conversion, Google Web Console to track search and keywords ranking, customer relations management (CRM) to improve conversions, and Calendly to automate lead inquiry scheduling.
We tested each page to ensure they're responsive to any device and accessible to all users. We optimize resources like images and illustrations to be just the right size and quality to deliver the best user experience.
Since its launch (Jan 2023), we've seen an increase in high-quality lead inquiries and scheduling. It's too early to tell what part of the site works and what needs improvement, but overall, it looks like it's going well. Success is always a moving target, so regular improvement is necessary.
So far, we have ranked 14 keywords in the top 5 rankings in Google Search. It brought in an increase of +1,191% in organic clicks.
Without any marketing outreach (so far), we're converting a decent amount of online visitors into leads. With a mixture of high and low sales intent visitors, we're currently looking at a ~10% conversion rate.
The application in place made it very easy for users to view Chef Leon's calendar for availability and book a call. As a result, we're getting several high-quality leads scheduled for a sales call per week.
