Cole Troester

Designed it, built it, then let the data tune it

A recipe site I designed and built, then kept improving once real visitors showed us what they actually needed.

  • Website

What it is

Creative Kitchen is a recipe collection from the people at Stephens+. It's the dishes we swap stories about, from holiday favorites to late-night snacks, with a newsletter sign-up and an invitation to share on social.

My part

I designed and built the site, then ran the data-driven optimizations after launch: watching how people used it, changing whatever got in their way, and measuring the result.

The Creative Kitchen home page: a dark hero with a "from stephens+" tag, the title "creative kitchen" and a short intro inviting people to share with #CreativeKitchen.
A recipe collection with some personality, from the people at Stephens+.Captured Oct 2026

Key decisions

  1. Let the food lead

    Big photography does the selling. Each card only carries the dish, who shared it and a way in, so the grid stays easy to scan and every recipe feels like it came out of someone's real kitchen.

    A grid of featured recipes with large food photos, including grab-and-go tacos, curry dipping sauce, a spicy salmon bowl, lemon dill tuna and choco tacos, each with a read more link.
    Big photography leads, and each card carries just the dish, who shared it and a way in. (Contributor names are blurred here.)Captured Oct 2026

  2. Ship, then let the data decide

    Each month a card above the recipes announced the theme (BBQ month, for example). The data said it had to go. Nearly every visitor came from our newsletter, which already told them the theme. People kept dead-clicking it, expecting a featured page, when the home page already was the featured page. And it pushed the recipes further down. So we cut it and tightened up the vertical spacing, since scroll depth showed people stopping short.

  3. One easy column on a phone

    On a phone everything stacks into a single column: logo and links, then the intro, then the recipes, one big card at a time.

    Creative Kitchen on a phone: the logo and links, then the hero title and intro stacked in a single column.
    On a phone, everything stacks into one easy column.Captured Oct 2026

See it live ↗

The live site may have changed since I captured it in Oct 2026. See the archived version.