Donape
Mobile-friendly recipe search engine website
A recipe discovery web app that helps users find meal ideas based on ingredients they already have at home, complete with personalised recommendations and rich, shareable content.
"What I like most about Codevate is that they’re friendly and approachable. They’re not scared of ‘telling it how it is’ when acting as a (valuable) sounding board. Their consultative style and knowledge make the relationship feel more like a partnership than a typical transactional customer/supplier engagement. This has helped keep me focused on my core value proposition and helped me accelerate growth."
Developing a bespoke web app search engine
inspiremymeal makes meal discovery effortless by turning what’s already in your kitchen into recipe ideas. Using a mobile-friendly web platform, users can search thousands of recipes by ingredient, dish type, or style—all without leaving home. Social logins and smart search make the experience seamless, helping users turn their pantry into inspiration.
The original concept was to develop a mobile app. However, we spotted an opportunity to help gain initial users and traction. By going with a mobile-friendly web solution, we could take advantage of search engine indexing to drive traffic to the platform, which would not be possible with only a mobile app.
The result is a sleek, intuitive site with rich engagement features. Users can sign in with Facebook, Google, Twitter, or email to favourite, rate, comment, and share recipes effortlessly. Behind the scenes, an admin panel and recommendation algorithm to drive engagement with relevant content.
Want to build a website like this?
Services delivered
Technologies used
- PHP - Symfony
- TypeScript - Angular
- PostgreSQL database
- Elasticsearch
- AWS cloud infrastructure
- Social sign-in integrations (Facebook, Google, Twitter)
Highlights of the bespoke website
Smart recipe discovery
- Advanced ingredient-based search, allowing users to find recipes by entering ingredients they have
- Auto-complete suggestions with typo tolerance enables uses to quickly and accurately enter their ingredients
- Rich filtering options to let users narrow down the results
Search engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing tools
- Highly optimised SEO to attract organic traffic from search engines, optimising the marketing budget
- Integrated blog platform to drive additional traffic through the publishing of relevant articles
- Use of recipe schema markup to allow Google to provide rich search results, with images and reviews, increasing click-through rate
- Optimised page load speed to improve SEO rankings while providing a better user experience
Engaging social features
- Social media sign-in options allow quick, frictionless account creation via Facebook, Google, or Twitter
- User comments on recipes build community engagement, as well as providing additional content for SEO
- User reviews provide social proof, increasing trust in the platform
- Social sharing links promote sharing of content across major social platforms to increase traffic
Content & administration tools
- Automated recipe import, extracting and tagging ingredients, allowing quick bootstrapping of the platform with thousands of recipes
- Recipe recommendation algorithm to show users alternate recipes, increasing engagement
- Analytics integration to track user activity and recipe popularity to guide the content and marketing strategy
Behind-the-scenes and other top features
Not all heroes wear capes. These behind-the-scenes features don't have screenshots, but form an important part of the project.
Scalable database design
Optimised queries and indexing allow for advanced rapid recipe searches.
Point-in-time database back-ups for disaster recovery
Automatic backups allow quick recovery in case of data loss, helping to ensure that critical donation data is not lost.
Highly available AWS infrastructure
Scalable cloud infrastructure on AWS ensuring uninterrupted service during high-profile or viral marketing campaigns.
SEO-optimised architecture
Schema markup, XML sitemaps, and clean URLs help search engines index recipes effectively, boosting organic discovery.
Want to develop a bespoke website like this?
"What I like most about Codevate is that they’re friendly and approachable. They’re not scared of ‘telling it how it is’ when acting as a (valuable) sounding board. Their consultative style and knowledge make the relationship feel more like a partnership than a typical transactional customer/supplier engagement. This has helped keep me focused on my core value proposition and helped me accelerate growth."
- 100% UK-based
- Complimentary scoping call
- At-a-glance feasibility analysis
- No obligation high-level proposal
- Work with an expert to evolve your idea
Project outline: building a mobile-friendly web app and search engine
inspiremymeal approached us as app developers with the core idea of developing a mobile app for iOS and Android, as well as developing a web platform which would allow users to discover new recipes that incorporated their input ingredients. One such use case would be for users to find recipes that make use of their leftover ingredients.
Initially, the idea was to aggregate live search results from around the web, such as Google search, with the intention of filtering out non-recipe results on the fly, linking to external sites to view the ingredients, methods and images.
Lean methodology and a clear USP
We worked closely with the inspiremymeal team to shape and improve upon the initial idea, while still remaining faithful to the value proposition, resulting in a platform with the best opportunities for success. Through our innovation consultancy, we proposed that the platform would have more value, with a much improved user experience, if it were to have its own database of recipes, ingredients and images. This afforded the project many benefits, such as high data quality, advanced searching, auto-completion of ingredients, recommended and popular recipes, content for SEO, increased user engagement and retention, and the possibility to expand and further monetise the platform in future iterations.
Our value-driven approach took a heavy focus on gaining an early return on investment, allowing for continuous re-investment in the platform, to grow in a sustainable manner - lowering risk and increasing the chances of success. We proposed to take a web-first approach with mobile friendliness as a core design principal, in order to target the largest possible market in one go, as well as substantially lowering the initial budget and time required to get into the market.
Taking a web-first approach had the benefit of having the platform's content available to search engines, such as Google. The right keyword targeting, content and SEO strategy can help to bring in a sustainable source of organic traffic over time.
Delivering a custom web application
The finished web application is a fully-featured recipe search engine, with recipes indexed and searchable by ingredients, dish type and style. Ingredients can be entered with auto-completion of known ingredients, as well as supporting free-text to find similar ingredients. Popular recipes are scored with a ranking algorithm and displayed on the home page to inspire meal ideas. We developed an admin control panel for the inspiremymeal team to manage the site's content, including recipes, ingredients, imagery, blog posts, and so on.
Each recipe has its own page, keeping users on the platform, where recommended recipes are shown based on their similarity of ingredients. The platform features social integration, increasing user engagement and retention. Users are able to sign in with Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as by email, unlocking features such as recipe favouriting, rating, commenting and sharing via social networks.
Want to build your bespoke web platform?
Looking to develop software that's greater than the sum of its parts?
Send us a message