Food-Pusher.com
Many moons ago, before I started studying UX/UI design, I started this recipe blog. The site has averaged about 25K page views per month for the last 12 months. My primary purpose in creating and maintaining the blog is to catalog recipes for myself, family, friends, and colleagues. Knowing that so many other people I don't even know also enjoy my recipes is just the delicious cream cheese icing on the cake.
Research
The foodie branch of social media is where I often go to see what types of recipes and what types of presentation of recipes is popular with users. I'm not in it for the numbers, but I don't mind some positive attention either.
Competitor Analysis
I've explored lots of other recipe blogs, and learned what works and does not work from them. I've tried to incorporate what works so that visitors have the best experience on my site.
Empathy
Feedback from friends and family about my blog/recipes have informed my design decisions--from which elements to include in each recipe to some of the tags I use to indicate difficulty level.
It all started at the Iowa State Fair.
Several factors have gone into the making of Food-Pusher.com. It did start with a first place win in the Non-Traditional Cinnamon Roll class at the 2010 Iowa State Fair Food Competition. The winning roll was a savory pulled-pork cinnamon roll. It was only when a random woman came up to me asking to my photo and my recipe to post on her blog.
To make a long story short, I realized that I could also be a food blogger and post my recipes. Since I was a Californian living in Iowa, and my little family visited my parents back in SoCal each summer, the blog became a perfect way to have access to my favorite recipes to cook for my family and make my weight-conscious dad gain a few pounds just for the fun of it.
Pinterest Punches it Up
Shortly after the introduction of Pinterest to the public in 2012, Food-Pusher traffic really took off. Apparently, there were lots of Pinners out there pinning my recipes.
As you can see in the graph, page views have tapered off since that time, but still maintains a healthy audience for a casual blog.
I want my blog to be as helpful and user-friendly as possible, so I've designed and maintained it with that intention.
A brief background story on the recipe that does not go too much into self-indulgent musings
No more than three main photos of the food item before the text to keep scrolling time to a minimum
A search box -- mostly for my own use
A succinct list of ingredients with hyperlinks to ingredients/products that may be unfamiliar to users (i.e. Jell-O pudding powder is a very American product)
A logical, practical list of instructions directly below the list of ingredients because this is standard recipe formatting
Images showing the process and stages of a recipe so users will know if they are on the right track as they try a recipe out.
Sometimes I embed a short video or a link to a Youtube video demonstrating a technique that is necessary or helpful to users because not everyone has the same cooking experience as I have
Translation widget for users across the world and across languages. (Note: visitors are from all over the world)
Print-friendly button because a lot of people like to have a hard copy fo a recipe to follow
An International Audience
Only about half of Food-Pusher.com's users are in the United States. So in addition to probably not speaking English, the other half of my audience is likely unaccustomed to many American foods and ingredients.
These are the reasons I have the translate widget and why I try to always include links to ingredients and foods that could be unfamiliar to non-Americans.
For the Love of Food
Over time, Food-Pusher.com has had times of abundant page views and times of lean. Through it all, it has served me well as a personal recipe box that is easily sharable with those I love, and with those across the country and the world who love food as much as I do.
