Wonderchef
A Sanjeev Kapoor Company
Wonderchef, a leading premium cookware and appliances company in India, approached us with the task of redesigning their website. This was after we had previously worked with them on establishing their brand guidelines.
Project and its context
Innovation and Expansion
Wonderchef is a major cooking and kitchen appliances brand in India. In 2016 Wonderchef had raised around INR 100 Cr and looked to bolster its offline presence and it’s brand. During that time Wonderchef sold it’s products through different mediums, including modern trade, general trade, e-commerce, teleshopping and a direct sales channel comprising more than 40,000 women. It was directly competing with two market leaders Prestige and Hawkins for an expected $500m market size and needed a strong brand differentiator over and above it’s product differentiation.
Product Differentiation
Wonderchef’s positioning among it’s competitors was comparatively premium. It targeted users that went beyond plain utility towards aesthetic considerations and hence launched semi premium product lines like the Nutiblend.
While user trusted brands like Prestige, Hawkins(Futura), they perceived Wonderchef more as an expensive and semi luxury brand that was endorsed by the celebrity chef Sanjiv Kapoor. (Wonderchef is a Sanjiv Kapoor company).
Brand Differentiation : Going Online and shedding a few baggages
For Wonderchef, going semi-premium meant improving it’s online presence and thereby catering to new-age customers that prefer browsing online for things they need and appreciate a stroke of class in brands. A personal favorite and Wonderchef’s brand team was the American cookware brand William Sonoma. Redefining it’s online presence also meant that it was going to clearly stand apart from it’s competition like Prestige that had pretty much never looked back at how it was perceived on the web. That being said, the tag that Wonderchef is a complete luxury brand needed to be shed and hence, an e-commerce website designed right would help.
Solving for the challenges
A brand to fit the offline world
One of the main problems for redefining it’s online product was the fact that Wonderchef’s brand was fully fitted for an offline presence. This meant colors, type etc that were used were majorly suitable for marketing collaterals for offline establishments like its stores or it’s BTL activations.
From Luxury to Approachable
The perception of Wonderchef was that of an unapproachable, limited edition, stylish, well endorsed brand. This made it difficult for users to consider Wonderchef products to buy in scale. Wonderchef then became a one timer, aspirational purchase. Hence, we needed to create a product+brand that reflected a more approachable aesthetic.
Learnings from research
Wonderchef’s Brand team had set up multiple Focus group discussions across Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai across people fo SEC A1, A2, A3 and B1. These 2-Hour FGDs for each group involved personal questions on their daily life patterns, likes, dislikes, interests, families, cooking culture, social life etc. Cooking related questions, cookware and appliance purchase patterns and behaviour were assessed. At no point in time, the Brand was revealed. Only in the last section, the Brand TVC and Products were shown to get feedback. Canvs was given a full low down of the research data and corresponding insights to get started on the online brand book.
Product positioning of Wonderchef with respect to Prestige/Hawkins
Companies like Prestige and Hawkins had positioned themselves as trustworthy, accessible & modern brands. Being a new entrant in the market, Wonderchef had to build that credibility fast. Not only that but the brand also wanted to position itself as health-focused, stylish and innovative. Their USP? Stylish, Premium and Accessible.
Perception of Wonderchef in target audience’s minds : Keywords “Views on Wonderchef”
Customers had difficulty finding Wonderchef as a brand that’s easily approachable. They found it premium and were not able to relate with the brand due to an emotional detachment. Not just that but there was also lack of visibility and popularity. It needed a story to connect to the users.
Vision and DNA
The vision of the brand has been to make cooking stylish and convenient for the Indian people. Wonderchef’s goal was to become the household name in premium kitchenware for innovative appliances.
Target audience
The brand wanted to cater to the user group between the age range of 25 to 35 and 36 to 45. They were more focused towards the Women in the family who were prime decision makers in the cookware segment.
How we went about solving the problem
Part 1: A New Graphics Manual for an Online Brand
The lack of an online brand presence necessitated the creation of a graphics standard for Wonderchef. Canvs Club quickly set up a small team to this task.
We interviewed their offline ambassadors, consumers who currently tried purchasing online, their marketing and brand team and understood the weighted needs of all these stakeholder groups. The result was a neat Graphics Manual for their online presence.
Fonts
This typeface comes in three variants and evokes the modernist style of the early 20th century, however, it feels less formal than, say, Futura. Montserrat really shines for short pieces of all caps and the geometric simplicity of the letters. In lowercase, Montserrat is still a pretty nice font with a nice large x-height and a lot more character than Arial or Helvetica.
Use of Gradients
A gradient creates visual interest and helps move users through a design. The eye will land on one area of color and the change between hues and light and dark areas helps shift focus across the screen. Gradients can be a highly useful and engaging design tool and add spark and intrigue to a multitude of projects.
Photography
We ensured the photography that Wonderchef uses for various communications—from advertising to web sites— convey the energy, happiness, and quality of life that the brand stands for and to instil the same in the customer’s lives. Promotional photography was used to portray Wonderchef‘s investment in making their products colorful which in turn will help distinguish the products from competitors.
Part 2: Wonderchef 2.0 : Redefining the Online User Experience
We interviewed their offline staff, consumers who currently tried purchasing online, their marketing, business and brand team and understood the weighted needs of all these stakeholder groups.
Resultantly, we were able to successfully simplify the entire user journey to be as frictionless as possible while ensuring issues such as discoverability were mitigated.
A product that embodies Wonderchef’s value proposition
As a brand Wonderchef stood for beyond-basic utilities. The ask of the Brand was to make an e-commerce product that looked premium and evolved compared to most run of the mill e-commerce standards that heavily stressed on the saleability of the products while compromising on aesthetic. We understood the ask, and while we pushed the product design well beyond the mundane, we didn’t compromise on the smoothness of sale or the abundance of options. We made sure we optimized for utility and aesthetics.
A clean, uber, comprehensive e-commerce experience
The website needed to be the perfect exhibition of the wide range of products offered by Wonderchef and simultaneously an ideal online portal for a user to make a quick purchase. We devised the flow and the experience to be relatable to the existing e-comm websites and yet have a flair of its own.
Dedicated engagement units to cater to Sanjeev Kapoor’s fanbase
Sanjeev Kapoor has been the face of Wonderchef from the beginning. His personal brand commanded enough allegiance from Wonderchef’s customers to hold together the offline brand almost entirely. Naturally, most users of the brand would expect content engagement around Sanjeev Kapoor’s usual offerings like cookbooks, recipes, cooking and dietary tips, cooking videos among others. This added a dimension of content marketing to the same e-commerce website that could leverage the presence of customers on the blogs and videos to cross-sell them items which piqued their interests while being on the website.
Staying in touch with the brand’s existing offline recall
Like any modern web product, Wonderchef manifested itself perfectly on all platforms that especially enabled users on mobiles to share its product via mediums like Whatsapp, something that was already fairly common given the presence of catalogue serving offline partners of Wonderchef.
Fully Mobile Friendly
The brand had existed majorly offline for most of its history till then. Naturally, a drastic change in context leaving behind its offline footprint would make for an abrupt and jarring brand experience which might as well look like a business pivot to online. Wonderchef did not want to let go of its well established offline positioning. Hence a section of the online product was dedicated to embrace its offline presence and re-establish its existing offline reach via retail stores and partnerships.
