Delivering Japanese Food Across the Whole of the UK

Year
2020
Company
Food and groceries startup
Region
UK
Role
Senior product Designer
Deliverable
Product improvements

Index

1. Project Background
2. Objective
3. User Research
4. Key Task Flow
5. Structure
6. Screen Improvements
7. Result

1. Project Background

A few years ago, a startup saw an opportunity to deliver Japanese food and groceries to the UK's Japanese community. They were well received not only by the Japanese community, but also by Japan expats and foodies. Customer feedback is generally positive, but with new vendors appearing, customers now have a greater selection of platforms to choose from.

2. Objective

Maintain to be the go-to platform for Japanese grocery and cuisine by continually enhancing the shopping experience.

3. User Research

We began our user research by identifying four use cases. These use cases were created as a response to previous user feedback and experiences. With these four use cases, we launched a survey that was sent to 500 of our most trusted customers. They assisted us in determining the most critical pain points in the purchase task flow. This is a selection of the most frequently mentioned pain points:

“Too many categories.”


“Can’t separate Dishes from Groceries.”


“Can’t read the product categories in the filter.”


“Don’t know when a product is in stock or restocked.”


“Can’t cancel an order.”


4. Key Task Flow

The majority of user pain points arise during the Discovery phase, the Decision phase, and the Confirmation phase.

Purchase task flow

  • 2. Discovery phase: the user is looking for products by browsing through the product overview page. Pain points occur when users don’t understand a product description or can’t find their desired product while using the filter or the search box.

  • 3. Decision phase: the user selects a product and adds it in their shopping basket. Pain points occur when users would like to cancel a product or an entire order.

  • 5. Confirmation phase: the user receives a confirmation email, an incentive to come back to the platform, or notifications. Pain points occur when users don’t notice that products are restocked, are back in stock, or sold out. 

5. Structure

The previous information architecture required users to click several times to access product categories. This has now been addressed by the addition of a tab navigation (see the two red boxes under the blue box Home delivery) representing the two most important product categories, Dishes and Groceries. Sub categories remain under Dishes and Groceries, but with a new category structure. 

6. Screen Improvements

Pain point
Users aren’t able to identify the two main categories: Dishes and Groceries.
Solution
Separate the two main categories and place them at the top of the product overview page under the top navigation, for easy access and better recognition.
Pain point
Users received an email when products were restocked. This didn’t work for most users. They either didn’t notice it or they deleted the emails.
Solution
Notifications like In stock, Out of stock and Restocked were incorporated above the red Add button under the product description.
Pain point 
Users experience difficulties when reading or understanding the product category descriptions.

Solution
Add product category descriptions in English and Japanese, enlarge the font size of the product category descriptions, and add a product category image.

Pain point
Users are able to change or cancel an order, but that was only possible through sending a request or a call.

Solution
The user can separately adjust or delete every order in the check-out, within a certain time frame.

7. Result

Developing a product never ends. The product purchase process is under constant monitoring and there are always things to improve, but we left the platform in a much better place than it was before and there is a solid foundation to build on.