Helping Japanese food lovers choose the right cooking class

Visitors couldn't find the right class, so they emailed staff — or left. After restructuring the site around classes and dietary needs:

• Class directory visits doubled (4% → 8%)
• Time on site increased by over 50%
• ~5% of visitors now go straight from the homepage to a specific class

Bentoya Cooking offers Japanese cooking classes in Tokyo, with vegan, vegetarian, halal and kosher options for international visitors. Those options existed — but you'd never know it from the homepage.

I had previously supported Bentoya with technical maintenance and WooCommerce setup. This project's goal: help visitors find classes matching their dietary needs, without emailing first.

Analytics and staff feedback pointed to three problems:

• Classes were hard to find. Only 4% of visitors ever reached a class page — on a site built around classes.
• Dietary information didn't help. Labels existed but weren't visible or filterable. Visitors browsed, felt unsure, and emailed staff.
• Key details didn't scan. Duration, location, price and dietary options weren't grouped, so comparing classes was work.

I led the UX and UI redesign with a focus on class discovery for international visitors. With no budget for formal research, I triangulated Google Analytics, staff observations, and comparison studies of Cookly, airKitchen and Veecoco to learn how people expect to browse cooking classes.

• Restructured the homepage to show class options immediately
• Implemented dietary filtering with category-based navigation
• Built scalable components the team maintains themselves
• Improved typography, contrast and hierarchy for accessibility

Working within WordPress/Elementor constraints taught me to design systems the client can genuinely own. The best measure of this project isn't the analytics bump — it's that staff spend less time answering "do you have a vegan class?" and more time teaching.