Jesse Schibilia

If you have never used campusfood.com to order food from your local campus eateries then you won’t be able to fully relate to this post. The interface used to be bulky and not very informative. They really have revamped the entire site. The new code is streamlined! I write this as I eat a falafel and hummus platter from Neubie’s…yum!

As a new user enters the site, he or she is presented with a much improved start page. The usability has increased such that the users’ attention is directed to important tasks for each stage of the order. They use instruction images with arrows attached to show the user what needs to be done next. An arrow, while simple, can do a lot for a website’s efficiency. I am partial to this simplified task instruction method. By presenting users with a streamlined task set for the things that they want to get accomplished - in this case, get food delivered - the following is achieved:

1. Efficiency of the implementation is increased: Simplifying a design hopefully means less overhead. There will be less information being relayed between the server and the client, effectively reducing bandwidth.
2. The user doesn’t get frustrated: You want to fix all your bugs and streamline the task sets with the following thought in mind: users should be able to get in and accomplish what they want to get done as quickly as possible. If a user gets frustrated, it translates into lost revenue for campusfood.com just because of a poor interface.
3. The user enjoys their experience: When a user looks at an interface and sees an inviting method to get their task completed, and then they can easily complete their task, they will be more likely to use it again. This translates into more repeat business for Campusfood.

So instead of taking you on a page-by-page review of Campusfood, let me just highlight a few things that they did that I liked:

• More user information is presented to the user. The first thing that I noticed when I logged on is that I can see my last several orders with the restaurants. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but the mere fact that the company is allowing users to access their own data on the web is trendsetting for a small company like this.
• User information is presented in simple terms. One of the best things that Amazon ever did was adding ownership to the account page link. So instead of a link that merely reads ‘Account Information’, you would instead see ‘My Account’. This is a subtle, but important difference. Another example is instead of something to the effect of ‘Package Tracking’, you would see a link in your account information that reads ‘Where’s My Stuff?’ Taking business operations and putting them into common, everyday, Joe-six-pack language is an effective measure to making the user experience more enjoyable. Campusfood does this on the new design (My Account, My Campus, My Fridge, etc.)
• The CSS is bright and playful, yet clean. This is very hard for me to do. My style sheets generally come out on the verge of ‘doctor’s office sanitary’. I can’t stand ugly styles with unecessary and seemingly misplaced elements. The crew that worked on this, however, kept it clean enough for me and managed to have some fun with it too.
• The visual cues are spectacular. See the screenshot below of the restaurants in my area. Note the method they took to show you that the restaurant is closed. This wasn’t in the previous version; I think the restaurant just got removed from this list when they closed for the night.
• Also see in the screenshot that when I am logged in, there is a button at the bottom that reads “Tell your friends” with a graphic of two cans tied together a la The Little Rascals. This button takes you to a quick and easy form where you can let your friends know about your great experience with the website. This means more revenue for Campusfood!

The design is ten times better than the previous one. The crew is entirely in-house as per my correspondence with the feedback rep. It’s good to see that web design crews are paying attention to the user experience as a way to generate more revenue. Congrats guys.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 5:41 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.