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Christopher LaRoseDirector of UX & Strategy

Quest Nutrition

Shopify performance, UX & ADA · UX & Strategy, Design, Shopify Development

2018–2022

For Elegant Seagulls

A speed audit that turned into a four-year partnership, through Quest’s acquisition by Simply Good Foods.

Overall conversions
+99%
Page speed
+150%

The problem

Years of layered updates.
Fixing one thing broke something else.

Quest hired us to speed up their Shopify store and lift conversions. Years of updates had left the store slow and fragile: scripts loaded twice or held up the page, images all loaded at once and nothing was under version control. Fixing one thing broke something else, and the cart glitched. Customers were running into trouble with rewards points and subscriptions.

Getting it done

Fix the foundation first. Then chase conversions.

Audited every core template and script, put the theme under Git, and tracked every known issue (200 in all) so we could test across devices and browsers instead of guessing.

Led the build with my PM, with the whole team testing and our creative director approving designs. I paired with another developer on ADA remediation to move faster and catch more.

Pushed to fix the foundation before chasing conversions. That meant a stretch where we couldn’t show ROI yet. Quest trusted us and was patient.

The turn

We moved from selling via lifestyle to
letting the product speak for itself.

We moved the homepage from lifestyle selling to product marketing, so people could find their favorites fast and still discover new lines. The lifestyle content didn’t disappear. It moved to its own pages, and to modules that pointed people there or to Quest’s social channels.

Quest Nutrition homepage before the redesign: a lifestyle carousel promoting seasonal pumpkin pie and peppermint bark bars.
Before · lifestyle-first
Quest Nutrition homepage after the redesign: new frosted cookies up top, then the full product line-up as round category tiles.
After · product-first, 2020 · visual design: Elegant Seagulls

The path to purchase

Find it, browse it, get matched, buy it.

01Find it

Quest mega menu with a product photo for each category.

Refined navigation reinforced with product visuals to land you in the right category.

02Browse it

Quest collection page showing a grid of protein bar products.

Collection pages lead with the products, not lifestyle photography.

03Get matched

The #OnAQuest quiz asking what kind of food you’re craving.

The #OnAQuest quiz narrows nine product lines down to one pick.

04Buy it

Quest shopping cart with shipping notes for heat-sensitive items.

The cart flags heat-sensitive items, cold-pack fees and separate pizza shipping up front. We also tightened the calls to action and the mobile experience to lift conversions and make buying easier.

Screens: Quest Nutrition, 2020 · visual design: Elegant Seagulls

The cleanup

200 legacy issues. Logged, then cleared.

fig. — one × per logged issue

Found in the audit

Status

Duplicate JavaScript libraries

Fixed

Render-blocking scripts

Fixed

No lazy loading

Added

No version control

Moved to Git

Glitchy cart

Rebuilt

Subscriptions

Rebuilt

Rewards points

New program

Every known issue, logged and tested across devices and browsers

200 / 200

What changed

Faster, easier to buy and easier to run.

  • Page speed up 150%, mobile conversions up 133%, overall conversions up 99%.
  • ADA remediation that began with Accessible360, now part of Allyant.
  • Rebuilt the cart, product pages and subscriptions, launched a new rewards program and added a product-finder quiz.
  • Made Quest’s team self-sufficient: theme settings to update content without a developer, and refreshed Figma templates they manage themselves.
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