My popularity and traffic analysis of Chef'd.com and HelloFresh.com

1. Nelson Butler
1/15/18
Web Publishing
Chef’d Popularity &Traffic Analysis
WEBSITE OVERVIEW
 General Company Information
Chef’d is a food service company that allows the consumer to order meals that satisfies
their lifestyle choice. They have a wide variety of food choices available that can be shipped
directly to the home of a hungry customer. A consumer can order any kind of meal plan that best
fits their diet and receive the ingredients to cook many different kinds of meals that can last them
up to a week. No subscription is needed to experience the meals that Chef’d has to offer, which
means anyone can order at any time.
Chef’d was founded in 2014 by Kyle Ransford. It’s a private business and their headquarters
is established in El Segundo, CA. The idea of Chef’d came about as Ransford was looking
through a magazine that contains delicious food articles. However, the ingredients it would take
to cook the meal he was interested in would be hard to find. “I saw I’d have to go to one or two
different grocery stores,” said Ransford in an interview with Street Fight, “that would ruin my
whole Saturday in order to have dinner tonight. I thought, ‘how come there isn’t a button that
someone could just bring you the ingredients?’” (Zappa, 2016) This was before the rise of other
meal delivery services such as Blue Apron or Hello Fresh, but Ransford admits that Blue Apron
gave them the encouragement to pursue with the idea. “But our original idea was always recipe

2. fulfillment,” Ranford explains, “so it always was the idea to give you exactly what you need for
a meal — a meal kit.” (Zappa, 2016) This isn’t Kyle Ransford’s first go around in starting a
business, he has extensive knowledge on entrepreneurship through his previous careers at Bank
of Manhattan and working as a real estate developer at Cardinal Investments. (Localista Media,
2016)
 Product & Content Analysis
On Chef’d’s website, the company surely makes an attempt to have all interested viewers
know what all they have to offer. Just on the homepage, multiple images of exotic meals are
found throughout. Four pictures constantly slide to show meals that can be offered for any
occasion such as a certain time you may want a meal (fig.1), new offers (fig.2), specific diets
(fig.3), and upcoming popular events (fig.4). This is an effective way to start this webpage off
because it gives the customer a brief overview of what they can bring to the table (literally)
without having to focus on a specific target audience. They proceed with telling three of the best
features that Chef’d has to offer a consumer, which are: Hundreds of choice, personalized
recommendations, and no subscriptions. (Fig.5)
Figure 1

3. Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4

4. Figure 5
Chef’d even includes a YouTube video on their homepage (fig.6). It is an 1:07 minute
long video that explain the purpose of Chef’d and all the benefits it can deliver. This is a very
important feature to utilize in this day and age because videos are very essential to a company
when it comes to brand awareness. With the video showing delicious looking meals being
cooked and the meal package itself, it allows the customer to become interested enough to
explore their website and see what they have to offer.
Figure 6

5. In Chef’d’s tabs, there is section called Personal. In this area, a customer answers a series
of questions that best fit them so that the website can find a meal plan that is most suitable for
them. These questions consist of cooking style, the number of people being fed, and the type of
experience you’re into. Their “Featured” tab has meals that the company believes are good
choices for the right customer. They also have the tab “Newest Arrivals”, which show about 50
different recipes that are new to the website. This is an important asset to have for customers
who have purchased meals plans from Chef’d before, it makes them curious every week to find
what new dinner, lunch, or breakfast meals will be ready for them to experiment.
Figure 7
Chef’d has a large range of recipes presented all throughout the website, but not all
created by them. Chef’d works with many different chefs to help them bring more exotic meals
to offer customers. Under the “Chefs” tab, 52 different chefs are featured with their name,
profession, and what they’re best known for (Figure 8). The chefs presented are authors, Food
Network Stars, winners of mainstream cooking competitions, dietitians, popular celebrities, or
even entertainers. When their photo is selected, information about the chef is explained along

6. with all the meals they have introduced, and the categories they are most known for making
meals of. This could determine what a customer would buy, they can find a chef that is
recognizable to them and be more inclined to buy a meal kit from a source that they trust.
Figure 8
Figure 9

7. Chef’d also have a wide range of partners from other well know companies. Under their
“Partners” tab, you can see all 50 companies that Chef’d associates with (fig.10). These partners
consist of other food companies such as Quaker Oats and Sun Maid Raisins, dietary sites such as
Weight Watchers and Women’s Health, and even periodicals like Paleo Magazine and New York
Times. Almost all of the partnerships have been involved in incorporating several meal kits. This
is another great determiner for customers to find the type feast they would like to order. Having
so many different well known partners means that there are more reliable sources to ensure the
meal plans serve its dietary purpose. For example, with the American Diabetes Association being
a partner, diabetic patients can order meal plans that are approved by the ADA and have it sent
right to their door. This makes for a lot more customers because they are less worried about the
ingredients they order.
Figure 10

8. Chef’d has an array of categories that are offered to a customer to choose from. The
“Categories” tab allows the consumer to find a meal plan that best fits the type of occasion they
are looking for (fig.11). The categories include but are not limited to: Seafood, No Meat, Top
Rated, Asian Favorites, Feeding a Crowd, Kids in the Kitchen, Big Buns, Tacos, Tacos
Everywhere, and Best Sellers. A consumer can find a meal plan with ease just by going through
these categories. It makes for an easier search and stays true to your current appetite. The prices
of Chef’d meal kits can vary depending on the entree. They can be as cheap as $14 or as
expensive as $79, it all depends on the meal. However, those meals that can feed a serving of 4
tend to be around $15 more than the same meal that’s only serving two.
Figure 11
 Competing Site
One of Chef’d’s competitors would be HelloFresh.com. HelloFresh.com is an
online business that specializes in delivering fresh ingredients to make a chef style meal
using their recipes. This website offers many of the same benefits as Chef’d which is why

9. they both compete with each other directly but on a smaller scale. Chef’d has a library of
over 600 recipes ready to use. (Fig.12) HelloFresh does have a significantly smaller
library with 15 new recipes weekly, and some staying in the archived library. Both sites
offer the same services but Chef’d does not require a subscription unlike HelloFresh. This
is one of the bigger perks to ordering with Chef’d because user would not be worried
about skipping this week, instead ordering when they want.
Figure 12
One major difference is each site charges users. At Chef’d.com users will pay a
set price for the ingredients and recipes based on two people being served or four. While
on HelloFresh.com the user will pay either $8.74/serving or $9.99/serving depending on
the type of plan the user subscribes to. The plans they include are Veggie Plan, Classic
Plan or Family Plan (Fig.13)

10. Figure 12
HelloFresh also contains more tabs than Chef’d. They include a Kitchen Ware tab, which
features products that a consumer can order just like they would a meal plan. This gives
HelloFresh a little more to offer by selling such items as pans, towels, or even a chef hat (fig.18)
Another product they sell is wine. Wine can be very essential to consumer when it comes to
having new and exotic meals. This tab gives user a more of drive to discover all of the options
that HelloFresh can offer.
Figure 18

11. POPULARITY ANALYSIS
 Link Analysis
Total Backlinks
NO. OF Referring
Domains
Average No. of
Backlinks/Domain
Chef’d.com 6,200 520 12
HelloFresh.com 31,000 2,800 11
Figure 13
 Overview and Link Quantity Assessment
A good determiner of discovering how successful a website is is by finding how many
backlinks and referring domains there are. This decides how popular a website is by
finding the number of backlinks, which are links from other websites that links to our
focused website, and the number of referring domains, which are how many web
addresses links to our focused website. Hello Fresh overwhelms Chef’d on their total
number of backlinks by 24,800, which means Hello Fresh has more links to websites that
also links back to them. They are also exceeding in the number of referring domains,
meaning that 2,280 more web addresses are containing links to Hello Fresh. So it seems
Hello Fresh has more popularity compared to Chef’d, however, Chef’d contains more of
an average of linked websites that are linking back to their website.
 Analysis of Link Quality for Chef’d – Top 10 Referring Domains

12. 1. Weebly.com (2 links) – This is not a high quality link because it focuses on website
building.
2. Dribble.com (2 links) – This is not a high quality link because it focuses on the design
of a website.
3. Bit.ly.com (1 link) – This is not a high quality link because it is a website that focuses
on the linking of websites
4. Nytimes.com (101 links) – This is a high quality link because the New York Times is
a very popular company and has a large audience across the nation. With over 100
links attached, this guarantees a lot of traffic being directed to chef’d.com.
5. Cnn.com (2 links) – This is a high quality link because it is very popular with a lot of
traffic on its website.
6. Forbes.com (2 links) – This is a high quality link because it has a lot of traffic on its
website.
7. Huffingtonpost.com (l link) – This is a high quality link because it is very popular,
however it may not drive a lot a traffic because it only has one link.
8. Buisinessinsider.com (1 link) – This is a high quality link because it is a popular
website.
9. Bloomberg.com (1 link) – This is high quality link because it has a huge audience.
10. Cnet.com (1 link) – This is a high quality link because it’s a popular website.

13. TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
Visit Analysis
Chefd.com HelloFresh.com
Avg. Monthly Visits
(SimilarWeb.com)
155,000 2,750,000
 Introduction and Definitions
The data above is a traffic analysis of how many users visit Chefd.com compared to
HelloFresh.com. However, these analyses are computer generated and can only come so
close to retrieving a precise number. The software attempts to measure how many visits
there are, which is the number of times a user has utilized a website in a specific time
frame. It also calculates the bounce rate, which is how often someone visits one page
before they leave the site completely.
 Chef’d.com Traffic & Trends
According to the traffic overview, the total number of visits they obtained in a six month
period through mobile or desktop means was 183.06 thousand, so this must mean around
30,000 people visit Chef’d a month. The number of pages they visited was an average of
4.13, and the bounce rate is close to 28%. The average amount of time someone would
spend on a page would be 3 minutes and 15 seconds. The number of visits that Chef’d
had was at its lowest during the months of July through September. A reason for this may
be that during the summer, customers are least likely to order foods to be sent to their
house because more time is spent barbecuing or going out to eat. However as the

14. temperature decreases, customers are more likely to stay in the house and cook meals in
the comfort of their home, which is why October through December has an increase. The
visits do drop again slightly in the month of November, this correlation could be caused
by Thanksgiving, where people are more interested in looking up new Thanksgiving
meals instead of exotic meals.
Figure 14
 HelloFresh.com Traffic & Trends
HelloFresh had a total of 2.24 million total visits in the past 6 months, which is about
373,000 visits a month. Average time spent on a page was 3 minutes and 26 seconds and
about 6.17 pages were visited. The bounce rate is a at a good 33.13%, so at least 1 out of 3
consumers will leave after the visiting the first page. The trend of HelloFresh stays pretty
stagnate throughout the whole 6 months, it is only at their last two months is when the visit
starts to gradually decrease.

15. Figure 15
 Comparisons
Over a six month period, HelloFresh.com had at least over 2 million more total visits than
Chef’d.com, which is also 343,000 more visits within each month. As a result of this
date, it can be known that HelloFresh is more popular than Chef’d. This is probably
because HelloFresh has been around longer than Chef’d, in which Chef’d has not had
enough time to get a bigger fan base than HelloFresh. In both website however, they have
a very close range of how much time a viewer will spend on their website, HelloFresh
surpassing by only 11 seconds. HelloFresh also contains more pages being visited than
Chef’d, which is about two more pages. The one thing that Chef’d has over HelloFresh is
a lower bounce rate, which means people are more likely to stay after visiting a page than
they would in HelloFresh. A major difference between the two websites is the fluctuation
of visits they have on certain months. As Chef’d months really play a role in how much
people will visit their website, HelloFresh tends to stay the same throughout the whole 6
months.

16. ENGAGEMENTANALYSIS
Chef’d.com HelloFresh.com Web Averages
Bounce Rate % 27.63% 33.13% 40%
Page Views Per
Visit
4.13 6.17 3
Average Visit
Duration
3:15 3:26 3:10
 Introduction and Definitions
The data used to perform an engagement analysis all came from SimiliarWeb.com. The
Bounce rate percentage is how often a user will visit only one page of the website before
leaving. Page views per visit is the average of how many pages a user will visit before
leaving. The average visit duration is an average how much time a user spends on the
website before exiting the website.
 Chef’d.com Engagement Data
Since Chef’d.com has a total traffic 183K in the past 6 months, which would average out
to about 30,000 people visited their website a month. However it’s hard to determine how
reliable that is because of all the increasing and decreasing it did within those six months.
In the summer, a significant number of visits for Chef’d website decreased, it goes down
by at least 50,000. Summer must not be the primetime for consumers to have meals
shipped to them or even search for what the website has in store. Meanwhile their visit
peaks at its highest in October by increasing by at least 10,000. There must have been
some serious promotions going on the month of October for them to receive so much
traffic. Chef’d has taken steps to try to increase in traffic. At the bottom of their first

17. page, they feature a photo of Kim Kardashian preparing one of their meal kits (fig. 16),
this can cause for a lower percentage of bounce rate. When an interested customer sees a
celebrity endorsement, they may be more trusting and willing to go see what more the
site has to offer.
Figure 16
Chef’d.com also has 101 backlinks through Nytimes.com, this causes for a lot of traffic
being directed to their website from a very popular source. If a consumer sees this, they
are more likely to believe that Chef’d has a good reputation if they were able to be
acknowledge by the New York Times.
 HelloFresh.com Engagement Data
HelloFresh had 2.24 million visits in the past months, this averages out to about 373,000
visits per month. They seem to not suffer drastically from the changes in months. The
were at their peak in the month of September, which is about a 1 million difference
compared to their lowest month in December. It is clear that HelloFresh produces a lot of
traffic for their site, but their bounce rate is at 33.13%. This may be due to their

18. significant amount of information presented in just the first page of their website (fig.17).
With enough information revealed to a consumer instantly, they can come up with an
informed decision on whether or not they want to pursue with this company. However, if
a user is interested in the site, they are likely to visit at least 6 different pages before
leaving the site. This may be because they have a Wine and Kitchenware tab, which gives
a user more options to explore. It’s a good way to receive more traffic by offering more
to the consumer instead of just their main purpose of meal kits.
Figure 17
 Comparisons
HelloFresh.com appears to be doing better than Chefd.com in a lot of aspects, but not all.
The website with the most traffic is obviously HelloFresh, it had over 2 million more
views than Chefd.com had within their six month period. Despite the numbers however,
Chefd.com has a lower bounce rate than Hellofresh.com. This is a good thing for Chef’d
because it means that a lot more users explore their website and see what else they have
to offer. This is probably because they have less information on their front page than
HelloFresh, which means a user will have to find what else Chef’d has to offer before
coming to a decision if they want to stay or not. According to the data of Page Views Per

19. Visit, Hellofresh.com has user traveling through more pages than they do Chefd.com, this
may be due to the HelloFresh’s tabs of Wine and Kitchenware. A user has more to
explore on HelloFresh’s website because they have more to offer, this results to them
explore more of their website. Lastly, HelloFresh also takes the win for a longer duration
of people being on their website. Although it is only 11 seconds more than Chef’d, it
must peak the interest more of the users because they usually tend to stay longer. A good
explanation for it may be because of HelloFresh.com extra tabs. In the end, HelloFresh
has a more successful website than Chefd.com, but the bounce rate does play a role in
which website gets more attention.
References
LocalistaMedia.(2016, September12). IT TAKESA MAVERICK:KYLERANSFORD.RetrievedfromShop
Local: https://www.southbaybusinessmavericks.com/takes-maverick-chefd-owner-kyle-
ransford/
Zappa,J. (2016, August2). Chef’d CEO:Meal Kits Will ‘DominateGrocery-StyleShopping OverTime’.
RetrievedfromStreetFight: http://streetfightmag.com/2016/08/02/chefd-ceo/