Organic grocery delivery startup Freshpep features beautiful-looking produce and nicely highlights the savings its passing on to the customer, but there are several confusing points a first-time shopper will encounter.

Here are four ways Freshpep can improve the shopping experience for its customers:

1. Remove menu overload confusion
2. Remove unit/quantity confusion
3. Remove savings confusion
4. Remove checkout confusion

Let’s dive in a little more on each area.

#1 Remove menu overload confusion

The first thing you notice after getting past the home page (more on opportunities there another time, perhaps) is that you land on a page with multiple menus. Across the top it’s very clear you are in the vegetables category, but the left nav is less clear (broccoli is considered “Greens” but asparagus is buried in the “Vegetables” catch-all).

In fact, a lot of staples like tomatoes, avocados and brussels sprouts are grouped into the “Vegetables” catch-all, only to be found by super-scrollers or ones committed to using the search bar.

Suggestion: Add some sub-descriptor text to the left nav with additional keywords to help people find what they are looking for. Also, the entire experience can be overwhelming – you may want to consider offering an option for people to get a sample basket of some of your most popular items, kind of like what CSA services offer. Could also explore integration with recipe sites as their backend fulfillment – anything that makes it easier for customers to put together combinations of goods without having to search/click a million times.

#2 Remove unit/quantity confusion

When viewing the smaller listings, it’s often hard to tell what the unit of measurement is. And if you just click the “+” three times thinking you are adding 3 onions to your cart, you might be surprised by what you actually get.

For example, I thought the onion listing was $1 each, but in reality it’s by the pound. For items like onions and peppers, normally I would go to the the store intending to by three onions, 2 peppers, etc.

Suggestion: The smaller card listing view should include the unit of measurement; some items should be switched to be listed as “$x/each” rather than by the pound; for items sold by the pound, ideally there would be an indicator of how many that is (e.g. 1 lb is 2-3 peppers).

#3 Remove savings confusion

The savings for each item are clearly communicated, but there’s a volume savings message that’s getting lost.

Suggestion: A simple way to improve this (and also increase sales) would be to show the escalating percentage savings in the quantity drop-down menu.

#4 Remove checkout confusion

After adding some items to my basket, I went to see what the checkout experience was like. After reviewing the items in my basket and clicking “Checkout” I was asked to login or create an account. Ok, pretty standard so far.

But after creating an account I was taken to the “My Account” page. It didn’t remember at all that I was trying to checkout. Frustrating to have to work harder to give you my money.

Suggestion: Never get in the way of someone trying to give you their money! The system needs to recognize when someone creating an account is in the checkout stream and take them to the next step in that process.

 

This is part of an ongoing series where I explore marketing ideas and web usability improvements and/or trends for companies in the Food Tech space. My full Food Tech Landscape deck is posted on Google Drive if you are interested.