Northwest Missouri State

1. Zoe Green
Intro to Web Publishing
Chef’d Popularity and Traffic Analysis
WEBSITE OVERVIEW
General Company Information:
Chef’d is a meal kit website that was created to provide a variety of meals easily
to customers in the United States. Kyle Ransford founded it in 2013 in El Segundo, a
suburb of Los Angles, and said his business model as a “shared economy model”
(Novellino, 2016). His company targets weaknesses in established meal kit companies
like Blue Apron, which have a limited selection and no repeated recipes (Novellino,
2016). There are over 300 meals, and the customer can order kits a la carte or with a
flexible meal plan. Customers can shop for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and set filters that
let the user pick their preferences like protein, cuisine, and preparation time. When
delivered, the Chef’d box comes with all the food pre-portioned and step-by-step
instructions for preparation. They feature many celebrity chefs who have provided their
famous recipes that customers can learn and make at home. Partners such as
Hershey’s and Campbell’s are popular companies that have worked with Chef’d to offer
new dishes using their products. Chef’d also focuses on the ability to personalize, with
four meals each week presented to you based off your answers to their food preference
quizzes.
According to their website, the company started receiving press March 31st,
2015, where they shared an article by Home Jelly where they invited the author, Skaie
Knox, to try and review their products. Since then notable companies such as CNBC,

2. Fortune, Forbes, and the Huffington Post have covered them. The news stories cover
subjects such as Chef’d receiving 35 million from Smithfield and Campbell’s Soup, and
more personal stories like Kim Kardashian advertising one of their Atkin’s meals.
Product and Content Analysis:
The home page has a standard arrangement, with a banner, navigation, a main
body that has seven features one can scroll through, and an informational footer that
has navigation links as well. The largest feature is located beneath the navigation, and
is a slideshow that features four different advertisements like “Kick Off Game Day” and
“What’s New” that will bring users to a specific part of the collections page. Overall, the
home page gives an overview of the company, and answers the question of “why
choose Chef’d?” The promotions show that there are hundreds of options, no
subscriptions, personalization of meals, and show large photos of two of their recipes.
There are links throughout the home page that bring you to different areas of the
website that the user may not have gone to if the navigation was the only option. Even if
you were only looking through the home page, Chef’d makes sure you see examples of
their food, chefs, partners, and the option to design your own culinary experience. When
using the navigation there is a drop down menu for the tabs All Meals, Collections,
Partners, Chefs, and Meal Plans. It offers specific links to certain parts of the page,
such as choosing a breakfast meal type under the All Meals tab. This will automatically
update your filters when you go to the full page. If there is a certain word that you want
to look for results under Chef’d provides a search bar in the navigation as well. For
example, I entered the word coffee and eighteen results appeared that were considered
related.

3. As mentioned
earlier, Chef’d
specializes in making
their meal kit delivery an
in-depth experience for
the user. When you sign
up, the Personalize
navigation tab becomes
Just for You, with four new options each week that are based off of your answers to
their surveys. Each Sunday you have the option to retake the survey, so the
recommendations are always up to date with your lifestyle and preferences. There are
four questions: what is your cooking style, type of meal, how many people you are
cooking for, and what kind of experience you are wanting. After the initial survey,
another is offered on the Just for You page that lets you
specify allergies and dietary restrictions. This helps
customers quickly choose products instead of searching
through pages of recipes on the meals or collections tab.
The Favorites tab compliments this by letting you save
your favorite dishes that you have bought to reorder
later. A similar feature lets the user bookmark recipes
that are accessible in your account under Saved for Later. With such a large amount of
products, individuals could be interested in this kind of personalization to make their
shopping and navigating easier.

4. The featured tab is very similar to the home page in that it shows and links to
different and specific parts of the website. There are slideshows for the new arrivals,
collections, chefs, and partners so that as much product as possible can be shown. The
main feature is the Big Game, which is a timely choice while the football playoffs taking
place. When looking at their twitter, they had similar features for other big events such
as Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. There is a shop all photo
at the bottom of the page that gives you the option to go broader with its products, and
navigate off the featured page. I think it is a strength of Chef’d that they offer both
personalized and broad recipe options for their customers, and not just through filters on
the All Meals web page. They organize their products in a variety of different ways and
in display them in multiple places so the site and its content is easy to explore. For
example, the chef of the month is on the home page, featured page, collections page,
and of course the chef page.
In the center of the navigation is the All Meals tab, which has a large image at the
top of the page explaining that users can browse through hundreds of different meal
kits. You can narrow down your searches with two different features: the filter and sort
by buttons. The nine filters are type of meal, time, protein, cuisines, category, skill level,
dietary restrictions, allergies, and spice level. For example, the range of time begins at
five minutes for the Quaker Overnight Oats to twelve hours for the Smoked Brisket.
There are nine different protein options, with more unusual options such as lamb,
shellfish, and duck. The five categories are gourmet, lighter options, quick and easy,

5. family friendly, then grab and go. Sort by gives you five different choices: best sellers,
new arrivals, lowest prices, highest prices, and alphabetical. Each recipe shows at least
one, usually two, prices that are associated with the number of people it feeds. Starting
with two people, it goes up by twos, with the largest group I found being thirty people for
a Celebration Cake with Vanilla Buttercream. Recipes like sandwiches or tacos it will
give you the quantity it makes, not
the number of people that it feeds.
The cheapest dish starts at nine
dollars for the Fuji Apple Coleslaw,
with the most expensive again being
the Celebration Cake for $189. Each
dish also shows how many people
have favorited the recipe so users
can gauge its popularity. It shows up
in grey, as well as the net carbs per serving and which brand the recipe is from. While a
small handful are out of stock, the majority of these recipes are orderable at any time.
With hundreds of recipes, you can scroll almost endlessly through Chef’d’s products.
There is a substantial difference in the depth of the products when compared to Hello
Fresh, which for its classic menu only has eight recipes for that week listed. People
could be more interested in Chef’d’s products when they have so many more options.
On the Collections page of Chef’d there are 45 different groupings of food. The
largest collections contain 52 recipes, for example the Chef of the Month collection,
featuring Brooke Williamson. The smallest have at least ten recipes, like the Refreshing

6. Meal Inspirations and the Eye on the Pies collection. Others include Ten-Minute Meals,
Chocolate Makes Everything Better, Avocontrol, and Kids in the Kitchen. This is just
another way that Chef’d organizes their products into more manageable content for their
consumers. People who are looking for a unique grouping of food, such as a collection
of soups or game day food, would have a higher chance of being interested. At the
bottom of the page there is also a link to Chef’d Wine, where they offer you wine
selection based on your state. However, for Missouri there is only one bottle of wine
available: the Sonoma County Ranches’ Zinfandel.
As mentioned earlier, the CEO of Chef’d considers his business model to be a
shared economy model. Brands have recipes that they need packaged and delivered to
their consumers, and collaborating with Chef’d benefits both companies. Chef’d gets
assistance with marketing, so their “customer acquisition cost” is far less than
competitors, and they are doing it without having to try and develop their own brand
(Novellino, 2016). Under their Partners tab they have 48 companies listed, though I
think it is strange they have themselves pictured as well. The brands are alphabetical on
the page, however in their drop down menu Campbell’s Kitchen is the first company
listed, despite only having
six recipes available. The
ten million dollar
investment by them was
likely a large factor in that
decision. With that logic, it is unusual that the company Smithfield Foods, a global food
company that invested twenty-five million dollars in Chef’d, is not a partner (Levy, 2017).

7. Other notable brands are Aktins, American Diabetes Association, Hershey’s, Coke, and
the New York Times. Partners like the Times, which is a publisher not a food company,
is using meal kits to help expand their revenue. The New York Times opened a cooking
section to their
newspaper and
website in 2014, and
that presents a clear
correlation with their
decision to partner
with Chef’d (Bowman,
2016). Some of the
brands go more in-depth with their products, for example Atkins offering two different
ways to order. They offer enough products through Chef’d that they can sell it as a
flexible meal plan. People are more likely to reorder when they are following a diet, such
as the Atkin’s Diet, so it is a good strategy to set up their partnership with a meal plan
option. In contrast, Hershey’s only offers six recipes on their page. Each brand page
has a bio and a known for section that uses categories from the filters listed above so
users have a better understanding of what that company is offering. An example of this
is the brand Casa Vega, which lists Family Friendly and Mexican as their descriptors.
Customers could be drawn to this page because they like or prefer a certain brand, or
were linked to Chef’d while on the partner’s website.
Similar to teaming up with different companies, Chef’d also collaborates with a
variety of different culinary experts. Under the Chef tab there are 52 different individuals

8. who are listed alphabetically with their headshot, title, and what food they are known for.
The Chef of the Month is at the top of the page with a discount code to save on their
recipes, and a link to their personal recipe page. Chef’d also has a featured chef,
Rebecca Katz, though this highlight is only shown on the drop down menu. This could
be because chefs like Brooke Williamson are more recognizable as TV stars. She is first
in the list of popular chefs, which makes sense, as she was the winner of the most
recent season of Top Chef.
Overall, their famous chefs are food network stars, authors, restaurant owners, health
experts, and foodie bloggers. People who watch Top Chef All-Star will likely be
interested in recipes from one of its winners, Angelo Sosa for example. When you click
on his name it goes to his personal Chef’d page, where just like the Partners’ pages,
they list categories their food falls under. Sosa’s for example lists things like American,
Asian, Family Friendly, and Gourmet, then below shows his six recipes. Unlike the
Collections page, the chefs do not have the number of recipes listed, but I contribute
that to the fact many only have one to three recipes. With such low numbers that may
make consumers less interested in the product they are trying to sell through that chef.

9. The last tab of the navigation is Meal Plan, where customers can subscribe to
getting weekly deliveries, with the max of seven meals. Chef’d offers five meal plans:
American Diabetes Association, Atkins, New York Times Cooking, Spoon University,
and Weightwatchers. Each brand’s meal plan page offers a bio, featured meals, and
savings offers. The more food you order, the more savings you receive, such as ten
percent off and free shipping for three or more meals. From there you are able to
customize your meal plan, breaking it down into three criterion: plan type, allergies, and
proteins. This goes back to the personalization that Chef’d specializes in, so that your
meal plan is as tailored as possible. At the top of the page it makes note that this is the
kind of meal plan that you prefer and considers that in its future recommendations.
When they provide you with your meals for the week, you can easily press swap meal
and choose another recipe from your account. This kind of customization could be good
for an individual who does not want to scroll and filter through recipes under the All
Meals tab.
Chef’d gives other enticements to order your meal kit through them, such as
creating a reward and points system. These points become reward cards, for example
turning in 4,000 points becomes 40 dollars for you to use on their site. They break it

10. down into three different ways to earn more: shop, social, and set up. For your first
three purchases you earn points from the only you spend, then after that it is a simple
point per dollar reward. Other ways include writing a review, subscribing to their
newsletter, and automatic points if you use a social media account to login. These
rewards can possibly keep customers for a following purchase, or make them want to
spend more. A user can also give 250 points to a friend, and then receive 1,000 points
after their friend’s first purchase. You are more likely to refer friends to Chef’d if it
benefits you as well, same with sharing it on social media.
With social media playing a large part in how a company advertises, Chef’d is
present on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.
Four of these are accessible on the website in the footer, and the platforms show things
like features, chefs, and press releases. At the top left of the website you can access
their blog, called Small Bytes. There are five categories: Cook & Eat, Tips & Tricks,
Dining & Entertaining, People & Places, and Shop All. This part of the website is more
fun and light-hearted, with quizzes and posts entitled, “How to Take the Most Drool
Worthy Food Pictures for Instagram.” There are many food bloggers on the internet
today, and Chef’d is making a smart move to get involved with that as well. Consumers
could be more interested in their products when they are reading and seeing them in
this kind of way.
The overall content of the website is comparable to a rhythm that expands and
contracts. Chef’d is constantly providing options throughout the webpages of how to
browse their products, whether that be in-depth or broadly. Even the navigation is

11. dynamic in showing their content. The most personalized options being at the beginning
and end of the tabs, with the most comprehensive being in the middle.
Competing Site:
Hello Fresh is the leading global provider of meal kits, delivering in the United
States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Germany, Austria, Canada,
and Switzerland. According to Owler, in 2011 Dominik Richter and Thomas Griesel
founded Hello Fresh in Berlin. Their estimated revenue is ten million dollars, with Chef’d
making just below half of that at 4.9 million. Neither company are on their lists of
competitors, but I contribute that to Hello Fresh being an older company that is making
double the revenue that Chef’d is. Both companies focus on the idea of providing fresh
and accessible meals that are easy to order and quick to ship. Hello Fresh is a
competing site because it offers the same kind of service of meal kits, but their business
models are slightly different.
Their press divides into three sections: 2017 press releases, 2016 press
releases, and then articles. It seems unusual that Hello Fresh started two years earlier
than Chef’d, yet is a year behind them in press. They may be only showing certain
countries’ press releases, and I think it depends from where you are accessing the
website. Hello Fresh does have popular names talking about them like Buzzfeed and
The Meredith Vieira Show, though not as many as Chef’d has on their website. Again, I
contribute this to them being an international company.
Hello Fresh’s service is subscription based with a meal plan that is fit to your diet,
the number of people you are cooking for, and number of meals you want weekly.

12. Meals are from your preferences, but you can switch out meals with the current menu.
You can choose between the classic, family, and veggie plan. The options are fewer,
with four people being the max amount Hello Fresh can serve. Recipes per week are
also no more than four, with the family and veggie plans being only three. Looking at the
menu for the week of January 27th through February 2nd, there is eight recipes for the
classic, three for the veggie, and five for the family. Currently a team of chefs create 15
new recipes each week. With HelloFresh being subscription-based, they allow their
users to pause weekly deliveries up to five days in advance.
Hello Fresh has an Our Menus tab that is similar to Chef’d’s All Meals tab in how
they display their product. They both show cook time, a photograph, and the title of the
dish. Though there
are noticeable
differences such as
Hello Fresh does not
show prices, how
many favorites, or
how many people it
provides for. They do
show allergens that
the dish does not
contain, and Chef’d
does this as well but
in a broader way through the filters.

13. Currently, Hello Fresh is cheaper than Chef’d. They offer a flat rate for their plans
with $4.99 per serving, while almost all the products offered by Chef’d are above this.
However, because you cannot buy a la carte with Hello Fresh’s plans you would have to
purchase at least two recipes. When you sign up for an account with the competitor site
they immediately offer you 35 dollars off your first purchase, and then 15 dollars off for
signing up for their newsletter. This is a much faster payoff than having to accumulate
1000 points for just ten dollars off like at Chef’d. Hello Fresh also connects with
Groupon for up to 52% off their products, and with Unidays to provide 15% off every box
for students. These prices and deals make them a strong competitor for Chef’d
considering meal kit service is expensive and deters lower income demographics.
The competitor also sells kitchenware with nine different types of categories such
as Little Cooks, Kits, Prep, and Clean. Hello Fresh has a far more developed wine
program, with three plans that offer six wine bottles per month. There is a stark
difference here when compared to Chef’d, who’s small wine selection is not even listed
on their navigation.
There has been a decent amount of press about how meal kit services are not
environmentally friendly, and Hello Fresh clearly addresses this problem unlike Chef’d.
On their navigation under How It Works there is an entire page dedicated on how to
properly recycle the majority of their kits. Under this tab as well is a Suppliers page that
details where they get their products here in the United States. Chef’d has neither of
these things, and only when going through the FAQs can you find some information
regarding their suppliers, and only one link to a recycling question. For other customer
concerns both websites offer online chats and categorized help pages.

14. Both meal kit services have a social media presence and a current blog
connected to their website. Hello Fresh has an app for Apple and Android, and Chef’d
does as well but it requires more than one keyword to have it appear in the search
results. This is most likely because the word chef is common in the app market. In the
digital age where many online users are accessing web sites through their phone, this
could hurt Chef’d by not being more visible.
POPULARITY ANALYSIS
Link Analysis:
Total
Backlinks No.of ReferringDomains
Average No.of
Backlinks/Domains
Chefd.com 5, 900 556 10.6
HelloFresh.com 31,800 2,800 11.4
This chart helps determine popularity of the two websites with popularity defined
as the number of sites that link to yours and the quality of those sites.
Overview and Link Quantity Analysis:
The first column of metrics listed refers to the total number of backlinks, or a link
from another website to yours. A referring domain simply means a website, and they
can have multiple backlinks.
Hello Fresh clearly has more in both categories, with over five times as many
backlinks and referring domains. Considering Hello Fresh sells on three different
continents it would make sense that they would have a higher quantity of websites
linking to them. They have also been around about two years longer than Chef’d, giving

15. them more time to accumulate. Looking at their estimated revenue, their competitor has
more money to spend on acquiring websites that are willing to link to them.
Analysis of Link Quality for Chef’d – Top Ten Referring Domains
1) Atkins.com (671): Atkins is a recognized brand site and a good quality link.
Stars like Kim Kardashian, Alyssa Milano, and Rob Lowe are promoting it,
and drawing public attention. The company has also partnered with Chef’d,
providing their diet based recipes through the meal kit service.
2) Runnersworld.com (625): This brand is well known, and is a global
publication for all kinds of runners. They make an estimated two million in
revenue, and have partnered with Chef’d as well to sell their recipes. They
are a strong link to have because they are identifiable and have related
content.
3) Poststates.com (422): This is a very poor quality website, and it ran an error
when I tried to access it through semrush. It is not a popular brand name, and
does not offer any other kind of information to validate its quality.
4) Sidechef.com (413): This website and app is a commonly used cooking
companion, and is a qualified referring domain. Sidechef has features in well-
known publications like USA Today, Buzzfeed, Forbes, and The New York
Times. Though the companies are not partners, Sidechef connects to Chef’d
by offering “Chef’d Meal-Kit Available” with certain recipes.

16. 5) Wickedstuffed.com (342): This website is of moderate quality. The owner of
the website, Amanda Hughes, is also the author of the best-selling book, “The
Wicked Good Ketogenic Diet Cookbook.” When searching for press on the
website only four results came up under news for Google, and the
WickedStuffed’s Facebook page only has 6,200 likes. Overall, the site has
relatable content, but is not high quality.
6) Yoohoo.io (252): There was no about page available on the yoohoo website,
but their description in a Google search is, “Save money by finding and
sharing thousands of coupons, codes…for all types of stores.” I could find no
press associated with them, and there are currently no search results related
to Chef’d showing on their website. Their domain is .io, which is popular
currently for startups, so they are likely a newer company. This is not a high
quality referring domain for Chef’d; it’s not well known or very relatable.
7) Vegetariantimes.com (241): Vegetarian Times provides one of the largest
collections of vegetarian recipes and three books available for purchase, and
has been around for the past 40 years. In 2017 their publication is now an
online magazine, and they have also partnered with Chef’d for recipe
distribution. They are well established and I would consider them a high
quality link.
8) Soyvay.com (157) Soy Vay is another partner of Chef’d, and they started as
a Jewish and Chinese couple combining their cultures and flavors to make a

17. new marinade. Owler estimates their revenue to be 6.7 million dollars, which
makes them a more profitable business than Chef’d currently. They are a
decent website to have links from; especially considering Soy Vay is selling
their recipes through them.
9) Foodboxhq.com (109): This company reviews meal kit delivery services like
Chef’d, Blue Apron, and Hello Fresh. They have written articles and posted
Youtube videos for Chef’d, though their videos have not received more than
1,000 views. Food Box HQ has good, relatable content to Chef’d, but they are
not a very well known website.
10) Nytimes.com (101): The New York Times is a phenomenal website to have
linking to Chef’d. They are a very recognized news source, and according to
Owler have been around since 1851. The New York Times makes about 1.6
billion dollars in revenue, and have partnered with Chef’d when they
expanded their publication to involve food.
The link quality analysis of Chef’d was done over the course of two days, and there was
a shift in the ranking of referring domains. Poststats dropped from third to sixth in the
ranking, and took off almost 200 of their links to Chef’d. The inability to load the website
possibly connects to some kind of recent problem or maintenance of the site where
backlinks are being removed.
TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
Visit Analysis:

18. Chef'd.com Hellofresh.com
Avg.MonthlyVisits 156,666 2,750,000
Introduction and Definitions:
The chart above is data from SimilarWeb, who analyze over 80 million websites
and three million apps for companies and users. This specific data analyzes the views,
or sessions, meaning the number of times users have visited during a month. The
averages are from the past six months, July through December. This does not track
unique visitor metrics, which is essentially counting the number of devices that are
accessing the site. A unique visitor could back to the site multiple times on the same
device and only be counted once.
Chefd.com Traffic and Trends:
Chef’d started out in July at 150,000 views and they fell until the end of
September. There was no posted press for September on their website, so they may
have not been getting additional views from notable publications or blogs. September is

19. also the month right after school starts, and NBC news stated that parents are spending
an average of 1,000 dollars for a supply list for just one student, nearly the same as an
average monthly mortgage payment in the United States (Popken, 2017). This kind of
financial strain on families would deter them from spending money on things like meal
delivery kits, especially when children are eating at least one meal at school instead of
at home.
Chef’d saw a major view spike in October, reaching their highest monthly views
of 220,000. October 4th was the day that Virginia Willis announced she was partnering
with Chef’d, which the award winning author could have brought a decent amount of
views to the website. The next day Chef’d announced they were also collaborating with
Sammy Hagar, an American rock star. Duff Goldman and Stella Metsovas introduced
their recipes as well in October. On the 7th, Chef’d posted a free trip to New York to
attend the Blended Burger Bash, and publicized it multiple times on their twitter feed
throughout the month. 20 percent of Chef’d sales were donated to the Susan G Koman
foundation because it was breast cancer awareness month, which could have
influenced a lot of buyers. With large investments by Campbell’s and Smithfield Foods
earlier in the year, October may have been the month that they increased their
advertising after the financial strain of school starting was over.
Though views went down in November, they were still higher than July through
September. Press by publishers like Epicurious and CNN released articles about using
Chef’d as an option to prepare Thanksgiving, and that may have kept traffic up. Chef’d
themselves launched their Thanksgiving campaign featuring Wolfgang Puck, a celebrity
chef, with a variety of different dishes for users to choose from.

20. December showed views back on the
rise, and this could be strongly correlated
with the popular American holidays such as
Christmas. Chef’d promoted a 12 Days of
Sweets with specially designed boxes and
dessert themes. They also offered a
complete holiday meal kit for customers that
was customizable with multiple different dishes for each course. The shopping season
overall showed record-breaking spending, with Reuters citing more than 800 billion
(Johnson, 2017). With Chef’d offering gift cards with the rest of their products, they were
able to capitalize on more holiday spending.
HelloFresh.com Traffic & Trends:

21. Hello Fresh has much higher numbers than Chef’d, with their views consistently
staying above two million. Considering they are a bigger company and produce globally,
it makes sense that they would have more traffic. Though they are the more established
company, more meal kit startups, grocery stores, and even Amazon are entering the
market every day wanting a piece of the revenue. With the supply rising higher, it could
correlate with the gradual decrease in views. Hello Fresh is also subscription based,
and users who wanted to purchase something just for the November and December
holidays would likely turn to another company like Chef’d instead of signing up for a
weekly meal plan.
Comparisons:
Hello Fresh has lost more views than Chef’d, but it has to be taken into account
that there is an almost three million view gap between their peak months. Chef’d
appears to have more sporadic growth than Hello Fresh, who remain fairly consistent
throughout the six months. Hello Fresh’s subscription based business model may also
help keep their numbers steady, with users consistently returning to check or adjust
their meal plan. Whereas Chef’d’s a la carte capabilities could cause more irregularities
depending on holidays, specials, and partner or chef releases.

22. Looking at traffic sources for both companies on SimilarWeb shows that Hello
Fresh users are directly searching for their website 14 percent more than Chef’d.
This could connect to Hello Fresh being a more recognized and well known company,
resulting in higher views. Their traffic sources for social media are also at about a 15
percent difference, and using a tool that is constantly changing content could be part of
Chef’d’s infrequent numbers.
Engagement Analysis:
Chefd.com HelloFresh.com WebAverages
Bounce Rate % 27.63% 33.13% 40%
Page ViewsPerVisit 4.13 s 6.17 s 4.6 s
Average VisitDuration 3:13 min 3:26 min 3:10 min
Introduction and Definitions:

23. This chart’s data comes from SimilarWeb, and covers engagement of both
websites, then compared to website averages. The first row is the bounce rate, meaning
the visitor only went to one page then left the website. Page views per visit is the
average number of pages a visitor views before leaving the site. This correlates with
average visit duration, which measures the average amount of time spent on the
website.
Chef’d Engagement Data:
Chef’d’s bounce rate is very successful by being 13 percent lower than the web
average. They are only slightly below page views per visit, but at a slim margin of .47
percent. Lastly, their average visit duration is exact with the averages for the web.
Overall, Chef’d’s metrics are good, and there are certain engagement tools that I
speculate help. The first tab in the navigation is either Personalized or Just For You,
and giving customers a
customizable experience
keeps them engaged longer. Filling out taste
and lifestyle quizzes makes the website more
interactive and dynamic, and these
recommendations linking to other pages
increases the page views per session.

24. Their blog, Small Bytes, is also a great engagement effort to retain their viewers.
The posts involve quizzes and
rankings, and that kind of reading
engagement adds greatly to time
on site.
On the home page, they have a minute long video that lets users see a variety of
products in use. However, I have noticed that the video does not always appear, and
that is a strange inconsistency for the website. If the viewer does not see an
engagement tool like that on the home page there could be a chance of a higher
bounce rate.
If at any point the viewer is confused or frustrated, there is a chat available from
9:00am-5:30pm Monday through Friday. However, that chat box is only available if the
viewer clicks on the FAQ or contact us tab in the footer.
If the user does not see the chat box on any other pages that could contribute to the
bounce rate or decreased visit duration. The rest of the pages
have a message box where you can either ask a
question or send a message to their customer service,
but it is not as helpful as the chat assistance. In the
footer a FAQ is available that categorizes and answers
basic questions.

25. The products themselves have every ingredient, allergen, what you need from
your kitchen, and nutrition facts listed. Viewers have enough information to make a
decisive decision and actually go through with the purchase.
In the popularity analysis, a referring domain was considered quality if it was from
a recognized source. This is
similar to engagement
analysis, where customers are
more likely to spend time on
the website if they see things
they identify. Having the
partners on the home page
was a good design move to
help lower the bounce rate of viewers who just see the main page.
Chef’d does not offer reviews of their products online, which could help them
have their viewers spend more time on their website. While they offer sign-ups to
become a food critic for them, it hurts this engagement tool that said reviews are not
clearly visible.
HelloFresh.com Engagement Data:
Hello Fresh scored really well in comparison to the web averages. Their bounce
rate is seven percent lower than the average, and the viewers are on average looking at

26. about two more pages. The time is very close, but Hello Fresh is still ahead of the
average.
Hello Fresh’s home page focuses on the importance of reviews and social media
with sharing three different tweets from satisfied customers. The home page also clearly
shows and describes
what comes in each box,
which is going to help the
bounce rate by providing
concise and clear
information for unsure viewers. Hello Fresh
uses words like customize and flexible so
users will feel like it is a personalized
experience and be more engaged.
Their customer service is very clear, with a chat box on every page. In the footer
they also have a help and contact section, with an FAQ and
categories to look through for any problems. This kind of customer service will keep
users engaged by being more willing to ask for help than navigating off the page.

27. I created accounts for both websites, and Hello Fresh has frequently been
emailing me information and deals. Viewers will stay engaged if they
are reminded and offered deals to come back to the site to look
around.
Comparisons:
Chef’d and Hello Fresh have very similar visit duration times, and they both are
close to the web average. They both have good engagement based off their metrics
compared to the web averages, though Hello Fresh was only beat in bounce rate by
Chef’d. I believe the bounce rate is higher for them because their home page has less
content than Chef’d, and that lack of engagement can make certain people leave. The
page views per visit is in Hello Fresh’s favor because they have kitchenware and wine
in their navigation, unlike Chef’d’s which is all based around the meal kits. If the viewer
came to the website and was not immediately interested in the recipes, there were two
other areas that they could go and still stay engaged. This could also contribute to the
visit duration, since Hello Fresh’s viewers have more than one kind of product to view.
Though Chef’d may have hundreds of more recipes, it shows by the visit duration and
many viewers are not going through a majority of them. Overall, I think Chef’d is doing
more to try and engage the viewer, but they are still a fairly new company when
compared to Hello Fresh.

29. Works Cited
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