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Indian Spices

An organization serving happiness

Project Overview

As design folks, we were intrigued by the landing page that
Indian Spices managed to pull off. They indeed put efforts to be
able to reach their target audience. Moreover, there is also
ample information available on their website for visitors.

DELIVERABLES

UI Design

UX Research

Indian Spices — An organization
serving happiness

In the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu is Coimbatore- a small but populated city where “Indian Spices” functions as a crutch to the impoverished.

The organization is a stroke of luck for many. From serving wholesome meals 6 days a week to providing individual aid and also coaching to the ones in need- as a community-oriented organization, Indian Spices has done enough to become the major means of survival for the needy in Coimbatore.

But like every charitable foundation, this one also depends a lot on the volunteers who step forward to make a difference by doing their part of the good. Those who sign-up are usually put to kitchen duty that involves everything but cooking, and also they are later on required to assist as servers during the dinner service that is usually after 5.

The Challenges

As design folks, we were intrigued by the landing page that Indian Spices managed to pull off. They indeed put efforts to be able to reach their target audience. Moreover, there is also ample information available on their website for visitors. But there were also a few snags:

The Layout: As a team who have spent hours finalising compelling and effective website layouts, the landing page didn’t seem like much of a structure to us. There was a lot of information that just didn’t make sense because of the structure the website had- it looked like a “stuffed cupboard”- with everything you need, only not sorted enough to make sense. For someone with zero knowledge of the brand, it will be difficult to figure what the organization is about. Solution? Content mapped-out aligned with the organization’s targets and intentions.

Vague copy: Even though there is ample information present on the website it hardly qualifies as a copy. The homepage tries to navigate the users to different pages of the website whereas it should have elements of a good value proposition and differentiation; baffling people more and making it difficult to understand as to what the whole fuss is about. Similarly, the about us page consists of information that is dispensable and can be altered for a more precise copy.

How does an effective and well plot-out landing
page look like?

The snags as mentioned above are impediments in the way of the organization’s growth and profitability.

A well-structured landing page:

  • Answers all the questions of the visitors without them having to navigate through various pages of the website like finding their way out of a maze.
  • Converts visitors into leads.

The extent of improvement

From the structure of the landing page to the copies and appearance there is ample scope for improvement and there remain many gaps that are required to be filled to attain the desired results. But for the sake of this study, we limited our scope to the landing page and what improvements we can make there to bring this to fruition.

Current landing page — What could be better

From the structure of the landing page to the copies and appearance there is ample scope for improvement and there remain many gaps that are required to be filled to attain the desired results. But for the sake of this study, we limited our scope to the landing page and what improvements we can make there to bring this to fruition.

banner indian

1. A well-structured landing page:

No visitor wants to speed-read 2 pages to figure what your website is all about. For any organization, be it a profit-making one or a social enterprise- a basic requirement is a great value proposition that tells the visitor what your organisation essentially is about and how it functions. Eastery’s landing page is more like a guess-game for any visitor; with a clear “what we do and how we do it”, catchphrase the visitor can get to know the basics about Indian Spices in the first interaction.

2. A well-structured landing page:

So many navigation options make it difficult for visitors to find what they’re looking for. We understand that there’s a lot of information that the Indian Spices wishes to pass on to the people who visit them, but dumping that in different sections and sub-sections is only going to piss off the users. There remains enough scope to dump redundant information and revamp the layout in a manner that eases navigation.

banner indian

3. A rather intrusive page

Indian Spices’s attempt to create an attention-grabbing page has gone awfully wrong here! There are different full-size images, and while we look at them, the all-cap text kind of draws all our attention to it- and from there, it’s like a two-way path that leads us nowhere!

banner indian

4. Unclear information hierarchy

Upon reaching the footer, there are a couple issues:

  • The dinner service is the heart of Indian Spices. This is important information. Why is it only mentioned for the first time on the footer?
  • Why does the footer have such a large heading?

Proposed Solution

banner indian

We propose to overcome all the challenges that the Indian Spices at the moment is facing through: a concise and clear catchphrase, an uncomplicated navigation bar and a more structured, detailed but to the point description of Indian Spices’s services.

Here’s what we can do with the navigation bar

banner indian

This is a more simplified version of what Indian Spices had done before- the logo of the organization is visible and yet looks very astutely placed.

Moreover, that navigation tabs now are goal-oriented fulfilling Indian Spices’s three main objectives i.e., spreading awareness to a larger audience, getting more leads to become self-sustainable and recruiting volunteers for smooth functioning.

The catchphrase

A precise phrase to describe Indian Spices and what they do so visitors know in the first interaction what they want and whether they are in the right place.

banner indian

A clear understanding of the organization — value proposition

While the catchphrase did the needful, we think a more elaborated value proposition is required for people to take action. Contrary to what was done before, we tried to keep it crips by incorporating all that Indian Spices does in three main points

banner indian

The contents were surfaced from the ‘About us’ page. The original version reads:

Indian Spices was set up with three main objectives:

1. To Build

To build a platform for groups and individuals who want to give back to the society but have little to no knowledge on how to do so

2. To Reach Out

To reach out to and assist marginalised communities through food and services with the ultimate aim of reintegration into society

3. To Minimise

To minimise food waste through food rescue, redistribution & repurposing

“Get involved” section

A well-bifurcated section of services with preview text so visitors can know where they’re headed. While the headers are much smaller than the previous one- they are quite easily readable and yet looks very subtle. And instead of using full-length images as it was done previously, we switched to large miniatures that gave more context to the preview text as well.

banner indian

Furthermore, sections like programs/events and collaborations have been removed from here as it is assumed that the target audience of Indian Spices will only look for the mentioned services here. As far as the details are concerned the visitors can obtain them from the ‘About Us’ section.

Conclusion

A website today is more like a virtual shop for our business. Whether we merchandise services or products, a well-designed website that focuses on catering for the needs of our target audience is what any company needs to scale profitability. Just like Indian Spices did, any business can make the mistake of putting every piece of information they find valuable on their website, which is exactly what we shouldn’t do.

Instead, we must think of what our prospects would like to see or know about our organization. Give them what they want, and that’s how you will never go wrong. In simpler words- pass on the message but be subtle!

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  • UI/UX Design
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