Improving Guidance Through a Navigation Redesign

As a freelance Product Designer at HelloFresh, I worked within the Growth & Conversion Optimization team. For this project I was assigned to the Payments squad to integrate Apple Pay to support a seamless and intuitive subscription purchase experience.

The Problem

A UX audit revealed that the supplier portal lacked clear guidance, and the main navigation was a key source of confusion. Because the platform operates entirely in English, many labels were difficult for non-native speakers to interpret, which often led to misunderstanding. At the same time, experienced users relied heavily on muscle memory to locate features, even when the structure itself wasn’t intuitive. Additionally, stakeholders pushed for a sidebar navigation to follow current design trends, but this layout didn’t align with the portal’s content, workflows, or user needs. Altogether, it became clear that the navigation required a clearer, more logical structure that could support both new and returning users.

Goal

The goal was to redesign the navigation so users could find tools and features more easily. This meant improving discoverability, reducing dependence on memorized paths, simplifying terminology, and creating a scalable structure that worked across web and app.

Hypothesis

By simplifying the hierarchy, clarifying labels, and creating more logical groupings, we expected users to navigate faster, engage more with key features, and reach their goals with less friction – whether new to the portal or long-time users.

Responsibilities

My work focused on UX and UI design, conversion optimization, and prototyping – ensuring a seamless, accessible, and visually consistent experience across web and mobile. I refined and validated design solutions through iterative testing and supported the implementation process through to launch.

Final Design

We explored multiple navigation patterns and learned that simpler UI consistently produced better results. The final design introduced a clear, lightweight structure with concise labeling, logical feature grouping, and a flexible layout that scales across responsive web and native app platforms.