Persian Basket App

Project Overview

Role: UX/UI & Product Designer, end-to-end · Real client project, Summer 2025. The result: daily orders rose from roughly 100 to 180 (+80%) and cart/menu abandonment dropped 50% after launch.

Persian Basket (Fresh Persian Meals) is a real e-commerce project designed end-to-end as UX/UI and product designer for the client. The brief: bring authentic, ready-to-eat Persian meals and specialty groceries online in a way that felt fresh, trustworthy, and easy to shop — for loyal customers who already knew the cuisine, and for first-time shoppers who’d never ordered Persian food before.

The Problem

Discovery with the client and a review of the existing ordering experience surfaced five recurring gaps:

1. Limited digital access to authentic Persian cuisine – few platforms made ready-to-eat Persian meals easy to discover and order online.
2. Freshness working against the brand’s own promise – most meal-delivery competitors leaned on frozen or heavily processed ingredients, undercutting the fresh, home-cooked positioning Persian cuisine depends on.
3. A rotating menu with no scaffolding – without clear structure, new customers couldn’t tell what was in stock, what rotated weekly, or what to expect next.
4. No cultural context in competing platforms – product photos and descriptions with no story behind them, leaving unfamiliar shoppers to order blind.
5. A transactional shopping experience – existing grocery and meal-delivery apps felt cluttered and impersonal, closer to a checkout line than a family kitchen.

Goals

• Build a seamless ordering experience for both meals and groceries, in one platform.
• Lead with fresh, preservative-free meals and make the weekly rotation easy to follow.
• Create clarity for both Persian and non-Persian shoppers, regardless of familiarity with the cuisine.
• Use visuals, copy, and structure to carry Persian culture into the product, not just the marketing.
• Deliver a clean, trustworthy, consistent digital experience end to end.

Process & Approach

1. Research
   • Studied mainstream and niche meal-delivery platforms (Uber Eats, DoorDash, cultural food services) to see how they handled discovery and trust.
   • Mapped the specific barriers first-time customers faced when a menu they didn’t recognize changed every week.
2. Information Architecture
   • Split the product into two clear flows: Ready-to-Eat Meals → Weekly Menu and Groceries → Fresh Persian Products.
   • Simplified navigation so freshness and cultural storytelling stayed visible instead of buried in menus.
3. Wireframes
   • Mapped ordering journeys for both meals and groceries.
   • Iterated specifically to remove the confusion caused by weekly menu rotation.
4. Design System
   • Warm, Persian-inspired color palette paired with clear, legible typography.
   • Reusable components built for a growing product, not a one-off launch.
5. Prototyping & Testing
   • Validated flows with customers both familiar and unfamiliar with Persian cuisine.
   • Refined onboarding and menu presentation until first-time shoppers could order with confidence.

Where AI Fit In

AI tools supported specific steps rather than replacing them: synthesizing research findings, generating early wireframe variations, running accessibility pre-checks (contrast, labeling, structure) ahead of manual review, drafting UX copy variations for revision, generating supporting visuals, and pressure-testing prototype flows before usability testing. Every output was reviewed, edited, and validated by hand.

Solutions Delivered

• Freshness, made visible → Meals labeled preservative-free and delivered cool, never frozen, right on the product page.
• A weekly menu shoppers could actually follow → A dynamic CMS-driven menu that made rotation and seasonality clear instead of confusing.
• Cultural storytelling built into the UI → Copy, imagery, and layout that carry Persian heritage through the shopping experience, not just the homepage.
• Two clear paths, one platform → Separated navigation for groceries and ready-to-eat meals, so neither got lost in the other.
• A consistent, trust-building design system → Reusable, culturally grounded components that gave the brand a coherent look across every screen.

Results & Impact

Because this was a live client project, its impact could be measured after launch — comparing ordering behavior before and after the redesign shipped:

• 80% more daily orders → Average daily orders climbed from roughly 100 to 180 after the new design went live.
• 50% drop in cart and menu abandonment → Clearer navigation between meals and groceries kept far more shoppers moving through to checkout.
• 30% faster checkout → The streamlined ordering flow cut the average time to complete an order by nearly a third.
• 25% higher average order value → Clearer menu structure and cross-visibility between meals and groceries encouraged larger baskets.
• 30% month-over-month order volume growth → Sustained growth following launch, not just a one-time bump.
• 30% repeat-order rate → Nearly a third of customers came back to order again, an early signal of trust and habit-forming design.
• 70% positive customer satisfaction → Customer feedback and reviews pointed to a shopping experience people found clear and dependable.
• 70% fewer support questions about the rotating menu → Customers understood what was available each week without needing to ask.

Outcome

Persian Basket bridges tradition and modern convenience, and the numbers back up the story: a redesign built around freshness, clarity, and cultural connection didn’t just look better — it changed how people shopped, converted more of them into customers, and brought a meaningful share of them back.

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