Penzeys Spices

Penzeys Spices is a beloved spice retailer, known for their blends and wide selection. However, a narrow navigation structure and unclear navigation hierarchy makes browsing and discovering their 293 spice products difficult.

Context

Penzeys Spices is a family-owned, independent spice retailer with a robust website and 70 brick and mortar locations across the country. They source, grind, blend, package, and ship all of their own products from their headquarters in Wauwatosa, WI. Since their founding in 1986, they pride themselves on being rooted in the communities they serve.

Problem

The site structure does not support browsing and discovering new spices
While search presented several Mexican spices, the search results do not represent the company’s complete offerings in that product area
“Browse by tags” in the left column matches the user’s filtering mental model; however, they function like secondary navigation (see 1)
The primary navigation doesn’t stand out in the page hierarchy (see 2)

My Role

Sole information architect, user researcher, UX designer

Methods

Card sort, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping

Client

Student project not affiliated with Penzeys, completed as part of my graduate studies at Bentley University

Solution

Organize content to match a user's mental model and provide education through structure and content.

Process

Document the Current State

Research: Open Card Sort

In order to understand how users organize and categorize spices, I conducted an open card sort with 29 Participants. They were asked to sort 50 spices (chosen at random from 138 total spices) into categories in a way that made sense to them, and name those groups accordingly.

Findings

all

participants used “herb” as a category label

18

participants created a “Baking,” “Baking Spices,” or related category

17

participants grouped spices by region or ethnicity

19

users expressed difficulty in categorizing unfamiliar items

50%

of the times presented, “Allspice” was miscategorized as a mixed spice or blend

Sample Task & User Journey

A father would like to try replicating several of his family’s favorite dishes from their local Mexican restaurant. After looking through recipes, he realizes that he’s missing several common Mexican spices. He’s already running low on his favorite chili powder from Penzeys, so he’s planning to do a big order.

Task

Explore Mexican Spices

User Journey

Final Design: Key Decisions

Promote Browsing and Exploration

On the homepage:

Created a clear page hierarchy
Informed by card sort results, broke the 293 spice products into 3 top level with 29 sub-categories. (Current site contains 11 categories, the largest contains 56 items.)
Provided direct invitations to explore and strategically placing related content

Site structure promotes browsing and exploration by additional associative navigation and more emphasis on associative navigation on the product detail page:

Allowed flipping through search results from previous page
Included links to related content
Emphasized related recipes
Emphasized related products
Added an “Add to Pantry” feature to allow users to save favorite products and make reordering easier

Provide Education Through Structure and Content

I incorporated education into the redesigned structure through:

Landing page dedicated to products in this category
Overview of the flavors of Mexico
Product description
Related products

Results & Next Steps

Through the restructuring of Penzeys' information architecture, I developed a more intuitive structure that promotes education, browsing, and exploration. With these changes, users of the Penzeys website now have an experience that allows them to find spices that fit their needs and goals.

To continue this project, some next steps would include:

Closed card sort to build on findings from open card sort
Build out additional wireframes for the rest of the page types
User testing to uncover usability issues in proposed redesign and understand if improvements accomplish goals as expected

Header image
SKopp on Wikimedia Commons

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