And whilst all of those absolutely matter, there's another factor that determines whether someone buys from you
or whether they close the tab and order from a competitor instead.
User Experience. UX for short.
It sounds like a tech term. Something that lives in a design agency’s pitch deck. But strip away the jargon and it simply means: how easy and enjoyable is it for someone to buy from you online?
Think about the last time you tried to order something and the website kept confusing you. Maybe the menu made no sense. Maybe you couldn’t find the delivery information. Maybe you got to checkout, hit an unexpected step, and thought: you know what, never mind.
That’s bad UX. And your potential customers experience it every single day on websites just like yours.
Why your brain takes shortcuts (and your customers' brains do too)
Good UX removes friction. Poor UX creates it.
Here’s a quick way to feel what that means. Imagine you’re in a rush and you walk into a supermarket that has no aisle signs, no logical layout, and products scattered wherever there was space. You’d give up and go somewhere else.
Your website can create exactly that same experience, and most of the time, you won’t even know it’s happening, because frustrated visitors don’t send you an email explaining why they left. They just leave.
The added challenge for food businesses is that customers can’t taste your product through a screen. They can’t smell it, pick it up, or read the back of the packet properly. Your website has to do all of that work for them.
That’s a lot to ask. But it’s also a huge opportunity, because most food brand websites aren’t doing it well.
Why food brands especially can't ignore this
Food is emotional. People aren’t just buying a jar of chilli sauce or a bag of granola; they’re buying a moment. A dinner party. A healthy start to the morning. A treat after a long week.
Your website needs to help them picture that.
A good user experience helps customers discover your products quickly, understand what makes them worth buying, trust you enough to hand over their card details, and check out without wanting to throw their phone across the room.
A poor one introduces doubt at every step, and doubt is the enemy of conversion.
You might have the best product on the market. But if your website makes people work for it, you’ll keep losing sales you never knew you were losing.
1. Make it instantly clear what you sell
Here’s a test. Ask someone who’s never heard of your brand to look at your homepage for five seconds, then close it. Can they tell you what you sell, who it’s for, and why it’s different?
If the answer is no, and for many food brands it isn’t, you’ve got a problem.
A founder once told me they spent months perfecting their product range, only to discover through a simple customer survey that new visitors thought they were a meal kit service, not a condiment brand. The homepage looked beautiful. But it didn’t communicate the basics.
When someone lands on your website, they should be able to answer four questions within seconds: What do you sell? Who is it for? Why is it different? What do I do next?
If visitors have to dig for those answers, they won’t bother.
Quick fix: Your homepage headline should state your product, your key benefit, and have one clear next step, usually “Shop now” or “See our range.” That’s it. You can say the interesting stuff once they’re already in.
2. Simplify your navigation
Menus that try to do everything end up doing nothing well.
There’s a temptation, especially when you’re proud of everything you’ve built, to surface it all upfront. Your story. Your stockists. Your recipe blog. Your wholesale enquiries. Your sustainability page.
But giving someone fifteen options is the same as giving them none. Decision fatigue kicks in and they go somewhere familiar instead.
A simple starting structure:
- Shop
- About
- Recipes
- Wholesale
- Contact
That’s five options. Each one has a clear purpose. Customers know exactly where to go, and that clarity converts.
3. Use product pages to do the selling
Most food businesses treat product pages like digital shelf labels. A photo. A description. The ingredients. Done.
But think about what actually goes through someone’s head before they buy a food product online for the first time.
What does this actually taste like? Is it spicy or mild? Can I use it with pasta or is it more of a marinade? My partner’s vegetarian; is this okay? Is £8.50 reasonable for this size? Have other people actually liked it?
These questions don’t get asked out loud. If your page doesn’t answer them, the customer just quietly decides it’s not for them.
Good product pages include:
- A “Perfect for…” section (e.g. “Perfect for grilling, dipping, and weekend barbecues”)
- A clear “How to use” guide with real serving suggestions
- Customer reviews, ideally with specific details. “Used this on pulled pork” beats “great product!” every time
- An FAQ that tackles the questions you hear most often
The more doubt you remove, the more confident people feel buying. And confident people click add to basket.
4. Check your mobile experience, right now
Open your website on your phone and try to buy something.
Not skim it. Actually go through the whole process. Find a product. Read the description. Add it to your basket. Get to checkout.
How many times did you have to zoom in? Was the add-to-cart button easy to tap? Did anything feel awkward or slow?
For most food brands, the majority of traffic is now coming from mobile, often people who found you on Instagram or TikTok and clicked through in the moment. That moment is short. If your site doesn’t feel smooth on a phone, you’re losing those customers before they’ve even had a chance to fall in love with what you sell.
5. Take your product photography seriously
When someone buys from a farmers’ market, they taste before they buy. They pick things up. They ask questions.
Online, your photography has to replace all of that.
A single flat product shot on a white background isn’t enough. You want customers to be able to picture using it: on a kitchen table, with a particular meal, as part of a moment they want to have.
Aim for a mix:
- Clean product shots for your shop listings
- Lifestyle images that show the product in real, appetising contexts
- Close-ups that let people see the texture and quality
- Serving suggestions that spark ideas
The more vividly someone can imagine eating or using your product, the more likely they are to buy it.
6. Remove every unnecessary step from checkout
Every extra step in your checkout process is a door that some customers won’t walk through.
People abandon baskets for remarkably small reasons. Being forced to create an account before buying. Not seeing their preferred payment method. Having to hunt for delivery costs that should have been stated upfront.
None of these feel like big problems in isolation. But they add up, and they add up fast.
Things worth reviewing:
- Is guest checkout available?
- Are there enough payment options (card, PayPal, Apple Pay)?
- Does the page feel secure and trustworthy?
- Is delivery pricing clear before the final step?
The goal is simple: help people finish buying. Everything else is a distraction.
7. Put your reviews where decisions are made
Most businesses collect reviews. Fewer use them in the right places.
If your testimonials live on a dedicated page that 90% of visitors never click on, they’re not doing any work for you.
Reviews are most powerful when they appear right at the moment of doubt: on the product page, near the add-to-basket button, sometimes even in the checkout flow.
That’s when someone is asking themselves is this worth it? and a real customer saying yes, absolutely can tip them over the edge.
One genuine, specific five-star review placed in the right spot can outperform a whole page of generic testimonials.
8. Speed matters more than you think
A one-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by up to 7%. For a website with beautiful, image-heavy food photography, this is a real risk.
You don’t need to understand the technical details. But you do need to know that if your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load on mobile, you are losing customers before they’ve seen a single product.
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights will give you a free health check. If your score is low, the most common fix is simply compressing your images, reducing the file size without sacrificing visible quality.
9. Make sure your brand feels consistent everywhere
There’s a particular kind of deflation that happens when you discover a brand through beautiful Instagram content, click through to the website, and find something that looks like it was built in a different decade.
Consistency isn’t just aesthetics. It’s trust.
If your packaging feels premium and your website feels outdated, customers notice the gap, even if they can’t articulate it. If your social media voice is warm and playful but your website copy sounds stiff and corporate, something feels off.
Every touchpoint, packaging, photography, tone of voice, website design, email, should feel like it comes from the same business. The same people. The same values.
That coherence is what makes a brand feel real and worth buying from.
The best UX is the kind you never notice
The food brand websites that convert best aren’t usually the flashiest. They’re the ones where everything just works.
Finding products feels easy. Understanding what you’re buying feels clear. Checking out feels quick and painless.
That’s what good UX actually is. Not design theory. Not technical jargon. Just the quiet, methodical removal of every obstacle between a curious visitor and a completed order.
Get that right, and everything else, the repeat customers, the word of mouth, the growth, tends to follow.