The Background
As a popular restaurant in the casual dining sector PizzaExpress, understands what its customers want. There had been a steady increase in mobile traffic to the site and it was apparent that customers’ needs were becoming increasingly mobile and information was required in a convenient format while on the go. With this in mind PizzaExpress wanted to offer a mobile version of its website.
The Challenge
The challenge was to create a mobile website that provides deeper brand engagement and added value for the customer.
This was a particularly exciting project for us as PizzaExpress had no prior mobile experience so were relying on us to guide and support their understanding through this process.
The Response
The brief for the look and feel required from the site was very clear; the brand identity was to remain strong, with high levels of functionality and a slick design.
Taking our lead from pizzaexpress.com website, traffic analysis was used to form part of our user research into the areas of the site that were most popular with mobile users and how and why they were using it. Immediately there was a set of clearly defined user needs; the most popular parts of the site were restaurant location and menu information. The mobile site needed to meet these user objectives. Research was also undertaken into the mobile offerings of other food outlets, to ensure PizzaExpress’ platform was competitive on various aspects such as load times and user experience.
Following the initial research, project requirements capture and definition exercise, wireframes outlining the user journey were produced, tested and agreed with the client. Central to the design ethos was to create a tool that assisted the user to achieve their objectives as quickly and easily as possible and considered the context of their circumstances whilst using the mobile site. As a result the user journey is short and simple and restaurants can be searched and selected within two clicks of arriving on the site.
The creative treatment and visual design were produced inline with the brand guidelines and ensure a coherent and seamless customer experience. The brand experience is extended by a bespoke icon that is installed when users choose to create a bookmark on their homepage.
The application was developed using HTML5. The browser’s mobile positioning feature was utilised to geographically locate users when accessing the site. An http module was created to recognise mobile devices and provide management of cookies and redirects. This functionality also allows the user the choice to easily revert from the mobile site to the full website and back again.
The fluid design allows for orientation changes; working in a landscape or portrait format as well as being suitable for multiple screen resolutions and aspect ratios. This ensures it caters for the range of devices out there. Furthering this issue of adaptability - high resolution style sheets were created to serve high resolution content to devices that use them such as the iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy.
A full, up-to-date menu, as well as a location\restaurant search both feature prominently on the mobile site. Search results are displayed in a list or map format in line with the user’s preference, alongside whether the restaurant is open or closed at the time of visiting the site. Customers are able to leave feedback or sign up for restaurant news and offers via a simple to use feedback form.
The result
The finished product is a site that has been created with the customer in mind; it’s slick, simple and easy to use on the move.
The results speak for themselves; in the first four months following its launch, mobile traffic to the PizzaExpress mobile site and website increased by 51%.
The team at PizzaExpress was delighted with the finished product.