Indoor Buddy: a site rebuilt to win demos
Built in six weeks with demo conversion up 24% and two grocers reaching out.
3 min read
Outcomes
- 400% increase in info-request emails
- +24% demo-request conversion
- Inbound interest from Around the World Market and Gristedes
Timeline
6 weeks · 2020
The Problem
Our site had almost no traffic and didn't convert grocery-store owners into demo requests, the buy-in we needed to test Meal Tab in real stores.
The Solution
A rebuilt marketing site that makes the value obvious, backs it with real user-interest numbers, and turns requesting a demo into one easy step. I designed and built the whole thing.
My Role
UX Designer & Front-End
Team
- 3-person team
I Personally Owned
- UX audit
- Content strategy
- Information hierarchy
- Wireframes & visual design
- Build (HTML, CSS, JS, Bootstrap)
My Process
Store owners needed a reason to say yes
Goal: Decide what the site actually needed to do
Improving the product meant getting store owners to let us demo it on their floors. To learn what those owners actually worry about, I sat down with Brandon, a manager at Brooklyn Fare. Three needs came out of that conversation.
- Show how Meal Tab can drive revenue, fast and obviously.
- Prove shoppers would actually use it if they saw it in store.
- Say what the product is, as clearly and briefly as possible.
Auditing where the old site lost owners
Goal: Judge the current site against those goals
I audited the existing site against those goals and basic UX practice, flagging each spot where it lost a store owner's attention or failed to make the case.
Leading with proof of demand
Goal: Give owners evidence, not just claims
An owner weighing an investment wants proof of demand. We had tested Meal Tab with plenty of users online, so the strongest numbers went straight onto the site. Brandon had said that seeing a shopper use it would land harder than any claim, so I produced a short demo video that frames the problem and shows the fix.
79%
would be likely to explore the interface in a store
66%
would switch supermarkets for the experience
Structuring the page around owners' concerns
Goal: Lead with what store owners care about
With the content gathered, I mapped the layout around the owner's concerns, giving each one its own section.
- Function: what the product does, findable in seconds.
- Revenue: about 44% of shoppers look for promotions digitally, so guided shoppers buy more.
- Product mechanism: how the system works and how it attaches to a cart.
From wireframe to a responsive build
Goal: Ship a responsive site in six weeks
Six weeks on the clock. I started from wireframes laid over the existing structure, then pushed to high fidelity with the team. In place of a catch-all "Contact Us," a clear demo-request CTA gave us something measurable. The build went responsive in Bootstrap, with JavaScript to play and pause the demo video as it scrolls into view and AOS handling the on-scroll animation.
My Impact
The new site did its job. Inbound interest and demo requests jumped, with Around the World Market, one of the largest grocers in the NC tri-state area, reaching out, and a demo scheduled with Gristedes.
400%
more info-request emails, from about a dozen employers
+24%
conversion to demo requests
What I'd do differently
Sell the outcome, not the feature
Store owners didn't care how clever the app was. They cared about revenue and proof. Leading with their outcome, backed by real numbers, did more than any amount of polish.
Three ugly truths
- 01
The 400% jump in inquiry emails works out to about a dozen employers. Real signal, small base.
- 02
The 24% demo lift has no surviving baseline. I can defend the direction; the denominator is gone.
- 03
As the only designer, I had no critique partner. Anything Maze could not measure was checked against nobody but me.
Liked this project?
I'm happy to walk through the decisions behind it, or talk about what I could bring to your team. Email is the fastest way to reach me.