This information architecture was planned in concert with the growth of the business. An expanded framework was needed to support Daily Harvest’s diverse culinary portfolio. The business aimed to become what was known as the “frozen pantry,” a concept which, if achieved, would expand the brand beyond delivered smoothies. After many quarters launching smaller scale tests that either didn’t improve the customer experience, gave us weak data signals, or had no impact on the business, we finally saw that we’d need to make a bigger change.

Working on the growth side of the business, we’d been hearing in research for months that prospects and first-time customers wanted a better way to see all products and portfolio highlights. Recognizing differing needs within the FTUX experience, we designed a scalable framework that could accommodate multiple views through high-utility concepts. People could independently and easily manipulate the view to narrow down the catalog to see specific products.

Starting with an MVP that would become more robust over the course of multiple quarters, we laid a foundation which leaned into traditional ecomm patterns. As conversion waned, the business moved away from clever and catchy ways to push people further down the funnel. Though DH prides itself on its brand equity, it was important that we not experiment with the main revenue generator; we could layer in brand elements that make the digital experience feel unique and reserve the risk-taking for recipes, social media campaigns, and farmer partnerships.

Research taught us that there was a clear desire to see everything, enabling more of a self-service model where people can adjust levers to turn products on and off. But prospects and early life customers don't have the product knowledge or trial experience to know what food will fit their needs. We saw the need to lean into self-service mechanisms like filters and search to support different browsing behaviors. A departure from brand language, we began to use terminology that better matches customers’ mental models in how they describe and think about food.

Short-term, we explored and researched 3 different anchors to ground customers—filtering, viewing all, and curated collections. A known pain point for some prospects and early life customers is that they’re not sure what products will fit their needs. We used our modular system to integrate educational content to provide some guidance. To further aid in discovery over time, we planned to explore personalization through the conversion funnel.