Umbrella UX Strategy and Design
Basic American Foods had just undergone a comprehensive re-branding initiative which positions the customer as a “Food Hero.” Their digital property was almost a decade old and needed a re-design that reflected the newly rolled out brand.
Before sketches even began, I led a brainstorming session with my team to determine how we can deliver the best experience to all audiences, external and internal. I posed a few big questions such as “How can we get employees excited about working at BAF?” and “How do we direct visitors to the content they want?” The team came up with a lot of tactics to accomplish the goals. Then, I drew an audience matrix and mapped out all the tactics along the 4 quadrants of the matrix. This ultimately helped to decide where each tactic made the most sense: Sales site, Corporate site, or Intranet site.
BAF’s customers and employees are the heroes in the brand story. To celebrate those heroes, the new experience features real images and videos of BAF employees demonstrating pride in their work, alongside warm customer-centric imagery that makes audiences feel a sense of victory with BAF foods.
Much of the existing imagery focused on the plain institutional packaging that the food comes in. I wanted to get customers excited about BAF foods in new ways. Larger than life food shots throughout the new experience demonstrate that BAF foods are far from basic.
The site should make our heroes feel empowered to get the job done. I completely re-imagined the UX design of the two key conversion areas to be intuitive and user-centered. Customers can look up a CN Sheet from their phone quickly, and they can order samples easily.
I added a layer of content marketing to provide thought leadership and to inspire chefs and restaurant managers to try out new menu items through a browsable, discoverable experience. They can then share the menu idea or purchase the ingredients inside the section.