Tesco Real Food

Online version of the supermarket’s award-winning inspirational recipe magazine

Project summary

The client

Tesco Real Food is an award-winning inspirational recipes site for the UK’s largest retailer.

What I did

I was responsible for the information architecture and UX, and oversaw the design output for over 5 years. This included the research and design of a faceted search; multiple branded microsites; an in-store, touch-screen recipe kiosk and a BIMA award-winning meal planning tool.

Key results

  • 1 million visits per month
  • Generates £800k revenue per month
services
Web design
Interface design
Information architecture
Role

Lead Designer

Duration

Many projects of 5 years

Project milestone #1

Web design

The Tesco Real Food website is the digital repository of the magazine's over 5,000 original recipes. It included a searchable database with faceted search allowing users to quickly find inspiration based on recipe, occasion or cuisine; a meal planner to help busy mum's plan their week; and video tutorials for basic kitchen skills.

The Real Food recipe site was designed to sit alongside Tesco branded retail sites. It is CMS-driven, responsive and integrated with Tesco grocery databases to help Tesco customers with their weekly shopping and encourage new users to shop with Tesco.
Faceted search was implemented to aid discovery and search design best practice was applied.
Many iterations of the recipe details page were designed and tested to maximise engagement. Ingredients data were integrated with the Tesco online grocery database, allowing users to quickly and easily add items to their shopping cart from the recipe pages.

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Testimonial

project highlight
Project milestone #2

Interface design

With over 5,000 recipes to choose from, the Tesco Realfood website provides considerable cooking inspiration. In order to offer this content contextually whilst users are in-store, Tesco ran a trial touchscreen kiosk project in 6 of their largest stores. The kiosk allows users to search for recipes based on meal type, cuisine, ingredient or dietary requirements. Once selected, the user has the ability to print out a list of ingredients to purchase in store.

Recipe info from the Real Food web site was integrated to provide rich data alongside each recipe, including related recipes to encourage browsing.
A receipt printer was installed inside the unit so that once a customer had selected a recipe, they could print off the ingredients.
Customers were encouraged to provide their club card details by offering competitions. This data was collected to help determine which customer demographics were engaging with the kiosk.
We recruited school students to test early versions of the kiosk to ensure the interface was intuitive for all ages.
project highlight
Project milestone #3
project highlight

Results

1 million visits per month

Generates £800k revenue per month