Our mission was to elevate customer engagement, aligning it with Nando’s vision through an exciting, visually captivating approach. Simultaneously, we aimed to refine the customer journey, crafting a more personalized experience—all within the constraints of a tight deadline.
A delightful
experience
About Nando's
Nando's, a South African fast-food chain renowned globally, specializes in flame-grilled peri-peri style chicken, boasting a presence in over 30 countries with 1200+ restaurants. Embracing its Southern African heritage, Nando's takes pride in cultivating unique African Bird's Eye Chillies on farms spanning Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
The process
In tackling the customer engagement challenge, Sunshine Gun Agency conducted extensive brand perception research in Australia and New Zealand, unraveling valuable insights into customer perceptions. Armed with this knowledge, we devised strategies to manifest a new, meaningful design board.
We identified pain points to enhance the user experience and employed prototype and five-second testing features. Our primary focus was streamlining the journey from browsing to adding a meal to the cart.
Given the time constraints, we opted to redesign existing components of the Content Management System, leveraging our design system for efficient creation and updating of library components.
Before and now
Brighter colours and a touch of black
The research indicated that it was essential to show a more energetic personality. The new design visually and tonally celebrates creative collisions regarding patterns, crops and colour combinations, using new motion graphics to enhance character.
We introduced bolder colours like pink, orange and green, which were already part of the brand, and a touch of black to help break up the different sections.
To get away from small details, we use decals extracted from South African style patterns.
To make the products more appetising and to persuade customers to add more products to their cart, we improved the product page by adding delightful ingredient images alongside the ingredient selection
CMS and flexibility
The content manager allows building pages based on blocks, so we designed and built different components with themes to enable the client to create new pages.
For example, on a content block, we introduced the options to:
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Pick between the dark or light content block and three theme colours: pink, green and orange.
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Select highlights (Those had rules to keep consistency throughout the website)
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Choose the content position, left or right.
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Select of decals/design
The new at-table experience
Data confirmed that 70-80% of customers are ordering through a device at-table. Whilst Nando's is a global leader in the digital space, there was a wealth of opportunity to optimize the at-table experience to increase spending and encourage repeat restaurant visits.
Delivering more personalization: Once the user scanned the QR code at the restaurant to start ordering, they were met with a welcome message showing their restaurant and table.
The menu page was also improved, adding dietary preferences and helping personalize the menu view.
Reducing ordering time: We created a carousel at the top of the menu bar with popular items so users could quickly add products to the cart.
The carousel also included the user's favourite products.
Facilitating brand discovery: After checkout, a new post-order content page invites users to learn more about the brand, featuring articles, Spotify playlists, and other activities that customers can enjoy while waiting for their food.
Increasing basket size: During the purchase journey, we included a cross-selling model with four small products to add before checkout, as well as a special offer pop-up.
We partnered with UK agency AKQA to create these new features, showcasing the brand identity and providing a feel-good experience.
Conclusion
Although we identified additional pain points deserving exploration, time constraints limited further testing. Fortunately, the client endorsed moving forward with Phase 2 of the process.
The project showcased exceptional teamwork, and while I acknowledge areas for improvement, such as optimizing collaboration with eight developers and refining handover and testing processes.
I enjoyed the challenge of reshaping Nando's face and experience under demanding conditions.