Rice recipe finder

Situation

A leading rice importer and distributor approached us with a challenge that many food brands face: their products were seen as a commodity rather than an inspiration. Despite importing premium rice varieties from around the world, their website traffic was low, time-on-site was minimal, and customers showed little engagement beyond basic product information lookups.

Market research revealed that many consumers felt uninspired by rice as an ingredient. While it was a kitchen staple, people often fell back on the same few familiar recipes. The company's diverse product range — including jasmine, basmati, arborio, and wild rice varieties — was being underutilised because customers didn't know what to cook with them.

The brand wanted to shift perception from being just a supplier to becoming a source of inspiration and expertise. They needed a way to demonstrate the versatility of their products while making rice cooking feel accessible, creative, and relevant to modern lifestyles.

Task

Our brief was to design and build a digital tool that would sit at the heart of a new brand campaign called "What's in Your Kitchen?" The campaign aimed to reposition the brand as an enabler of creativity and resourcefulness in home cooking.

The tool needed to achieve several objectives simultaneously. It had to increase engagement with the brand's website, showcase the full range of rice varieties in context, reduce the intimidation factor around cooking with different rice types, and create shareable, social-media-friendly content that would extend the campaign's reach.

Crucially, the tool needed to feel genuinely useful rather than promotional. It had to solve a real problem for home cooks: the daily challenge of deciding what to make for dinner using ingredients already at hand. The marketing team wanted something that people would return to regularly, not just visit once out of curiosity.

Action

We began with extensive user research, conducting interviews with home cooks to understand their pain points and recipe-planning habits. We discovered that most people had three to five ingredients sitting in their fridge or cupboard at any given time, and they often struggled to think of interesting ways to use them together. This insight shaped our entire approach.

We designed the Rice Recipe Finder as an ingredient-first search tool. Rather than browsing by cuisine type or meal category — approaches that assume users already know what they want — we let people select what they actually have. The interface presents common ingredients as visual buttons, making selection quick and intuitive. Users can choose vegetables, proteins, herbs, and pantry staples, then see instant recipe suggestions that incorporate those items alongside one of the brand's rice varieties.

The technical implementation prioritised speed and simplicity. We built the tool as a client-side web application using lightweight JavaScript, meaning all filtering happens instantly in the browser without page reloads. Each recipe card displays a clear photo, cooking time, difficulty level, and the specific rice variety recommended, with direct links to purchase that variety from the brand's online shop.

We worked closely with the brand's in-house nutritionist and a food writer to develop and test over 150 recipes. Each one was photographed professionally, written in accessible language, and tagged with multiple dietary options including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free. This filtering capability was essential for making the tool inclusive and useful to the widest possible audience.

The campaign integration was carefully considered. We created shareable recipe cards that people could save to their phones or post on social media, each branded subtly with the company's logo and the campaign hashtag #WhatsInYourKitchen. The tool was launched alongside television and social media advertising, with the ads explicitly directing people to "find your recipe" on the website. We also built in campaign tracking to measure how different channels drove traffic to the tool.

Throughout the three-month build, we ran usability testing sessions with target users, refining the interface based on real behaviour. For example, we initially had ingredients grouped by type, but testing revealed that people preferred seeing everything at once, so we moved to a single scrollable grid. We also added a "surprise me" button after users requested a way to get random inspiration when they felt indecisive.

Result

The Rice Recipe Finder exceeded all initial targets and became the most successful digital initiative in the company's history. In the first three months following launch, the website saw a 75% increase in unique visitors, with the recipe finder accounting for 60% of all site traffic. Average time on site increased from under two minutes to over seven minutes, indicating genuine engagement rather than brief visits.

The tool generated more than 50,000 recipe searches in its first quarter, with users selecting an average of 3.4 ingredients per search. Data showed that 34% of users returned to the tool at least three times, demonstrating that it had become a regular resource rather than a one-time novelty. The "surprise me" feature proved particularly popular, used in 28% of all sessions.

From a commercial perspective, the campaign drove measurable business outcomes. Online sales of the brand's rice products increased by 43% year-on-year during the campaign period, with particular growth in premium varieties like black rice and red cargo rice — products that had previously been slower sellers. The company attributed much of this growth to the recipe finder introducing customers to unfamiliar rice types in accessible, appealing contexts.

Social media engagement surpassed expectations, with thousands of users sharing their recipe results using the campaign hashtag. Several food bloggers and influencers featured the tool organically in their content, providing additional reach without paid promotion. The brand's social media following grew by 45% during the campaign period.

Perhaps most significantly, brand perception shifted measurably. Post-campaign research showed a 38% increase in respondents associating the brand with "inspiration and creativity" compared to pre-campaign levels. The company had successfully repositioned from commodity supplier to culinary partner.

The tool continues to operate two years after launch and remains one of the website's most-visited pages. The company has since expanded it with seasonal recipe collections and integrated it into their email marketing strategy, using it as a cornerstone of customer engagement. What began as a campaign centrepiece has evolved into a permanent, valued service that keeps customers connected to the brand.