Driving more traffic online to relieve instore peak hour stress
Improving SaladStop!'s online ordering experience
Platform
Mobile Webapp
Client
SaladStop! Group
Date
2023
Role
Team lead
UX Researcher
UI Designer
/01 BACKGROUND
SaladStop!, a fast-casual restaurant chain from Singapore, is known for its emphasis on providing fresh, nutritious and customizable salads and wraps. SaladStop! mainly establishes its physical outlets in Central Business Districts (CBDs) and Business Hubs, such as at the one north/Buona Vista and Raffles Place business districts.
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These locations target office workers seeking quick and nutritious lunch options. As these stores have been experiencing high volumes of instore customers during peak lunch hours (12:00-1:30pm), the key business challenge has been driving more traffic online versus instore to relieve peak hour stress.
Speaking to customers in queue extending to outside of the store at Metropolis, One North SaladStop! at 12:10pm on a Tuesday.
/02 RESEARCH
OBJECTIVES
Our role as the UX team is to help SaladStop! better understand the ordering behaviours and motivations of their customers and work on usability of webapp to improve user acquisition and retention.
This will be done through understanding:
1) Why customers are not ordering online
2) How customers may be encouraged to order online
3) What friction points in the current webapp are
How might we enhance the experience of SaladStop's online ordering platform based on customer behaviours and motivations so as to encourage more online pickup orders during peak hours?
/03 KEY INSIGHTS
From our user surveys and on-site observations and chats we had with customers, we gathered the following key user insights.
3.1 SURVEY INSIGHTS
63% prefers to takeaway over dining-in
Most surveyed preferred takeaway over eating-in, which presents a large group of customers that SaladStop can potentially target for their pick-up feature.
68% customers do not know app exists
Most customers are unaware of the online store. Whilst for those who were aware, online ordering is not top of mind when they choose SaladStop.
More than 50% are motivated by discounts
Customers ranked "Faster order preparation and pick-up" and "Online exclusive discounts" as main motivators of ordering online
3.2 USABILITY TESTING INSIGHTS
From our usability testing that we conducted with 6 participants who were all new to the online ordering platform, we discovered the following usability issues that were a common occurrence amongst all participants.
Scrolling Fatigue​
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Users experienced scrolling fatigue when swiping through the long list of ingredients, particularly when looking for specific ingredients to add or remove from the order.
Lack of clear Price & Quantity display​
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Users are inconvenienced by the lack of clear price display. Users can only see the additional price charge of the ingredient after selecting it. Users did not know how many ingredients they could add to their order.
Log-in anxiety
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As users are prompted to login before they confirm their orders, most users were hesitant to login as they perceived that logging in and leaving the “Send Order” page will make them lose their carefully customised order and restart the order process
MAIN TAKEWAYS FROM INSIGHTS
In conclusion, in the early part of our research, we realized that there was more of a marketing and awareness issue that was out of our team's scope. We made sure to communicate this to the client along with recommendations.
However, what we also found was that there were still some fundamental issues with the UX of the webapp, and so as a UX team, we decided to proceed with solving those issues so that when people do eventually come in to use the app, they have a friction-less experience.
/04 RESEARCH METHODS
Heuristic Evaluation
Site Visits & Chats
User Surveys
Usability Testing
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Conducted against 10 usability principles to detect usability issues and ways to resolve them.
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Derived hypotheses that requires validation.
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Visited 2 SaladStop! locations to observe and speak with customers.
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Initial understanding of customers' lunch habits, webap awareness
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Surveyed 41 users
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Validate hypotheses
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Understand customers walk-in motivations
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Conducted usability tests with 6 users
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Discover potential improvements / feature suggestions
4.1 HEURISTIC EVALUATION
To kick off the project, we carried out a heuristic evaluation based on Nielsen Norman Group's 10 usability heuristics principles by doing an mobile webapp walkthrough and identifying potential usability issues. This also helped to identify elements of the app we should target during our usability testing.
4.2 HYPOTHESES
From the heuristic evaluation exercise, as well as gathering our own assumptions, we came up with the following hypotheses of why people were not using the SaladStop! online ordering platform.
PUSH FACTORS
(AWAY FROM ONLINE)
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Customers are unaware of online ordering/pick-up
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Customers find it difficult to customise their orders online therefore prefer to order in-person
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Customers are unfamiliar therefore intimidated
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Perceptions that order is no longer fresh upon pickup
PULL FACTORS
(TOWARDS INSTORE)
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Customers want to take a break from work/stretch their legs during lunch, therefore prefer to dine instore
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Customers like instore recommendations from staff
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Customers made the decision to eat at SaladStop on the spot
4.3 ON-SITE OBSERVATIONS & CHATS
We went on the ground to 2 popular SaladStop! locations (namely Metropolis @ One North & One George St) to carry out observational studies and have quick chats with customers who were waiting in the queue to order. From this we were able to gain initial understanding of customers' lunch habits and awareness of the webapp.
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We uncovered some interesting findings that other forms of User Research may not have been able to reveal:
1) 3 customers brought their own tupperware
2) 1 customer chose SaladStop! as it was the only place that sold smoothies
3) 2 times was the amount of times "online order" was mentioned in the physical store.
Speaking with customers waiting in line - goal was to get initial understanding of customer behaviours and lunch habits, and to recruit survey participants. (SaladStop! @ Metropolis one North)
4.3 USABILITY TESTING
We recruited 6 participants for our usability testing. To screen the participants, we made sure that they 1) are regular salad consumers, so that their salad consumption habits will be relevant, and 2) are working professionals, the main target audience of SaladStop.
/05 SOLUTIONS
To solve the above usability issues, we have proposed the following recommendations in the order of the user flow of the webapp:
Seeing more on the home page
Problem
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Scrolling fatigue
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Inability to search for options quickly
Recommendation
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Reduced size of the Option tiles, so that at first glance, more options and categories are visible
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Designed for horizontal scrolling and "See All" expandable categories to reduce vertical scrolling fatigue.
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Included a search bar for easy typing/searching
Existing
Proposed
Various improvements to adding ingredients
Shorter ingredient tiles (displays 6 at glance)
Ingredients tracker
Progress Bar
Problem
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Scrolling fatigue
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Inability to see ingredients added
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Lack of visibility of steps/stage of ordering
Recommendation
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Reduced size of ingredient tiles to display more ingredients at a glance
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Added ingredients displayed at top
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Progress bar to show current stage of ordering
Existing
Proposed
Resizing of ingredient tiles
Problem
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Scrolling fatigue
Recommendation
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To reduce scrolling even further, we explored condensing the ingredients into smaller tiles, to show 9 tiles instead of the existing 3 (3 times more ingredients shown).
Existing
(3 visible)
Rectangular format
(9 visible)
Long format
(5 visible)
/05 RETROSPECTIVE
In this project, we encountered an interesting issue where the key business challenge was not inherently a UX issue. This goes to highlight the importance of User Research and how a deeper understanding of users is instrumental in finding and addressing the root cause(s) of the problem.
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Project Takeaways:
1) Always validate assumptions through User Research
2) Addressing business challenges requires a holistic approach
3) Foster user-centricity and value feedback
I am satisfied with the final deliverables that my teammates and I executed in this month-long project. I believe we have covered a commendable amount of research and design considering the small team and time we had. Nevertheless, personally, as team leader, I recognise the need to refine my leadership skills, specifically in the areas of task delegation and understanding teammates' strengths and preference.
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Personal Takeaways:
1) Seek input from team members about their preferences and areas of interest
2) Give team members more autonomy, which not only can boost their confidence but also lead to a more productive and innovative team
3) Include individual check-ins to gauge how everyone is doing (this allows a unbiased response)
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