VJ’s Sports Bar & Pizza
VJ’s Sports Bar & Pizza is a local restaurant located in Alameda, CA. The owner, Vijay, is a former franchisee of Straw Hat Pizza who decided to leave the chain and make the place his own.
Currently, Vijay is in the process of adding new features and revamping his restaurant. He has added more TVs to accommodate more sports and built an outdoor patio for the warmer months. Vijay has his own Point of Sale system that is linked to his app for ordering, but his current website is still built around Slice’s infrastructure, which charges a fee for each transaction processed. This presents a perfect opportunity to help Vijay reintroduce his restaurant and make it fully his own, rather than being known as “what used to be a Straw Hat.”
2023
Skills:
User Experience, UI Design, User Research, Competitive Analysis, User Testing, Branding
Partner:
DesignLab
The Challenge
VJ’s Sports Bar & Pizza’s current website is built on Slice’s online infrastructure, which makes it look generic and not engaging enough for website visitors. This presents an opportunity to help Vijay reintroduce his restaurant and make it fully his own, rather than simply what used to be a franchise establishment.
Project goals:
Identify and Understand Audience Expectations for the Website.
Assess Audience Needs for Online Ordering Platforms and Restaurant Sites.
Performing a Market Analysis of Competing Pizza Chains and Restaurants.
Develop Strategies for User Engagement and Online Ordering Optimization.
Research
Core User
Steve R. - The Sports Enthusiast
Steve is a local sports fan who wants to watch the game on a big screen while enjoying food and drinks. He will likely visit the website to check the schedule of upcoming games and find out what specials the bar offers. He frequently goes online to find out more about sports bars and likes the idea of having a “home bar”. He enjoys being around others who share his passion for local sports and being known as a local.
Goals
Discovering menu items and new additions.
Building a sense of community and being an active member within it.
Providing friends with a way to enjoy delicious game-time food by ordering online.
Supporting local businesses.
Challenges
He would rather find out about restaurant specials before leaving the house through the restaurant’s website.
Would like to find out what games will be played at the bar.
Prefers the atmosphere of a sports bar instead of watching the game at home alone.
Needs
He enjoys getting away from home to watch sports.
His sports essentials include chicken wings and pizza, but he also likes to know about other restaurant deals.
Meeting other sports fanatics and enjoying the atmosphere energizes him and keeps him coming back to these places.
Methodologies and Insights
Secondary Research
Secondary Research was executed in order to understand what other pizza chains and restaurants are offering online to drive sales at a local and national level. These are some of the key findings:
“Most customers prefer to order directly from a restaurant, either through its website or app, rather than through a third-party service like DoorDash or GrubHub.”
“Ordering for carry-out has become a trend since the pandemic, making the digital experience of restaurants even more important in recent years.”
“Many customers research restaurants online before visiting, and online reviews and ratings impact their decisions on whether to try a new restaurant or not.”
Competitive Analysis
The analysis was made from Domino’s Pizza, Round Table Pizza, Pizza Hut, and three local pizza restaurants, mainly considering each of their website’s design, navigation and overall experience.
Domino’s Pizza’s website main strength is its easy navigation, with ordering and delivery options prominently featured at the top of the page. However, the website has small text blocks for some content and contact information is hard to find.
Round Table Pizza has easy-to-understand navigation and the inclusion of rewards and loyalty programs. The fonts used aren’t the most legible, and buttons on photographs such as “order now” and other calls to action get lost in the background image.
Pizza Hut’s has very simple navigation as well, with featured orders and seasonal deals prominently displayed. The disclaimer text in images is small, and the app isn’t prominently featured or easy to find.
Local pizza restaurant websites are mostly hosted on Slice’s platform, making them generic and not very engaging. For example, the website’s scroll can become too long since everything is on a single page, including the entire menu, contact information, restaurant information, and online ordering.
Key findings from secondary research indicate that most customers prefer to order directly from a restaurant, either through its website or app, rather than through a third-party service like DoorDash or GrubHub. Online ordering has become even more relevant since the pandemic. Ordering for carry-out is also a trend, making the digital experience of restaurants even more important in recent years.
User Interviews
Users tend to use third-party apps like DoorDash and GrubHub for their convenience, but if available, they’d rather use the restaurant’s website for online ordering and additional information on menu ingredients.
Users discover new restaurants and bars through word of mouth and online reviews primarily. They look for information on menu items, environment, and hours before deciding to visit a restaurant.
All three users interviewed expect websites to be easily accessible on their mobile devices and to be easy to navigate.
Users appreciate up-to-date information on promotions and pricing.
Users value detailed menu information, mobile optimization, and up-to-date information on promotions and pricing when browsing restaurant websites.
Wireframing and User Testing
Features and User Flows
The insights from the secondary research and interviews informed the essential pages to create an online experience. From those, the following three flows were tested to make sure the site met its goal:
Finding out more about a menu item
Finding an event
Contacting the restaurant
Visual Design
Low fidelity sketches
Mid Fidelity Wireframe
High Fidelity Wireframe
Re-Imagined Branding
Prototype and Solution
The prototype was tested with 3 users who provided feedback on the design, layout, and content of the site.
Overall, users provided positive feedback, with most finding the site well-organized and easy to navigate. Some opportunities for improvement were identified, including increasing the font size of the menu to improve legibility, reorganizing the navigation for greater clarity, and adding contact information for private events.
The main changes to the screens based on user feedback are the use of color for the bar’s home teams, the inverted header to make it visually lighter and incorporating more of the secondary color to it, as well as minor spacing adjustments to make the site more legible for the user.
Before Usability Testing
After User Feedback
Reflection
In this project, the process of redesigning a local business’s website was explored to create a responsive site that encourages customers to try out the restaurant. To comprehend the audience’s needs and expectations for ordering platforms and restaurant sites, user research and competitor analysis were conducted. This helped identify best practices and opportunities for improvement and resulted in a product that resonated with the test/core users after iterating on the prototype. It highlighted the importance of always keeping the user in mind.
The digital experience, both online and at the restaurant, has a critical role in bringing more customers and helping them discover local businesses like VJ’s Sports Bar & Pizza. It is essential to understand and listen to their needs to create an appealing and successful experience.
