Building the ChefSteps Community

Whether you are a home cook or professional chef, we at ChefSteps want to provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to become a better, smarter cook. For new people joining our community, our site can be very overwhelming. Making ice cream with liquid nitrogen is REALLY fun to watch, but how about people who are just starting to learn? How can we as a community help out these newcomers and put them on the right track?

The development team here at ChefSteps is currently focused on this problem. We've built a simple recommendation system to help people find content relevant to their skill level and culinary interests. Here's how you can help: log into ChefSteps and go to your profile page. On the left below the badges, you'll find a Recipe Recommendations button. Go through the flow and let us know your feedback below. If you were new to ChefSteps, do you think this would help? Do the recommendations make sense?

Over the next few weeks, we'll be iterating and improving the system so your feedback is extremely helpful.

Thank you for your help in building a great community! We appreciate it!

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Samuel_68313

I will definitely do whatever I can to help build the community, but one of the things that should be remembered going forward is that chefsteps has a niche and that is accurate and precise cooking (for want of a better way of putting it). The website definitely can be intimidating, but the community is overwhelmingly supportive and helpful in so many ways, and personally I feel like the best way to increase traffic is to focus on this aspect. I mean simply a bigger community means more people talking about the site and hence more traffic. This might be as simple as something like spot prizes for community recipes (you guys test a few community recipes and give a free class to your favourite, or even just feature it as a "chefsteps recipe", I know I'd be stoked if a recipe I posted got a badge for being approved by the chefsteps team or whatever)

In terms of refining search results, I really like the idea but currently it needs a few more items. So personally I don't have easy access to liquid nitrogen but I do to dry ice, I have a Sous Vide Supreme but not a vacuum chamber, etc. it's a good idea for sure. My top result though was the knife sharpening course, which is a course I have actually completed.

reub_50398

I found the six recommendations (incidentally the same as pictured in the above example) pertinent to my interests. That said, I've already compulsively watched all of the videos posted so it's hard to say if my site behavior is a good data point for your analysis.

I would say that from a user experience perspective, I'm not sure you're chasing the right challenge. The site content is fantastic and organized well enough that any newcomer who is predisposed to be interested should be able to browse to find interesting recipes. The successive levels of engagement are then going and trying one, reading forum discussions and interacting with the community and contributing.

I'd say that if you can get someone who finds the site and views a recipe to go out and try it, you'll increase engagement in truly meaningful and measurable ways. I'd focus there conceptually rather than the already slick UI.

Just my two cents. As @SamuelG said, happy to help contribute and build the community as well.

Matthew_Snyder_68770

The recommended recipes that came up for me were pretty accurate and applicable for me.

But I would have to agree with @reub; I don't think the site itself is particularly daunting or difficult for users to find what they're looking for. Maybe that's just familiarity, since many of the forum regulars have been around a year or more now and have watched the site evolve.

If I had to highlight one thing that I think would be beneficial to broadening the community, I'd say there could be better crossover between the discussions attached to the recipe videos and course lessons, and the discussions here in the forum. As it is, it almost feels like two different groups of people engaged. I think this is something that @MichaelNatkin has mentioned a few times here as a challenge you guys are trying to sort.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Any info on how the recommendations are made? While I like what was recommended I am curious as to why those were chosen for me.

I think having a site-wide challenge of some sort each week/month would help with engagement as well, I really think the weekly culinary challenges helped grow the forum activity.

tarrosion

The button doesn't appear to do anything for me...

Edit: works now

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