Get in touchA 13 week, five country exploration into food delivery payment experiences and friction.
“Andrew and Maia were a delight to work with, bringing a wealth of experience and insight to the project.“
Lydia Howland - Former Head of User Research at Deliveroo
Deliveroo is well known as a food delivery company, operating in 11 countries around the world. The payments team is responsible for ensuring smooth transactions for customers in all these markets, with different domestic payment ecosystems and customer behaviours around payment. In some cash is king, in others customers expect to pay after receiving their food, in others, government subsidised meal cards pay the way to a delicious work lunch.
The head of Deliveroo’s very busy user research dept approached Muir Wood & Co to serve up insights to a hungry payments team. Our goal was to ensure that payment is never an impediment to getting tasty food in tummies. We set out to take a strategic look at the role of payments in the purchase flow for users in different contexts, and find opportunities to optimise the design of the payment interfaces.
“The payments team within Deliveroo had not benefited from having their own research team for a while, so many of the developers were unfamiliar with the process or what to expect from it. Not only did Andrew and Maia deliver valuable insights and product implications but they steered the team through the process, engaging them at every turn and ensuring even greater appetite for research going forward.“
Lydia Howland - Former Head of User Research at Deliveroo
We spoke to customers in 5 countries, including France, Kuwait and Hong Kong to get a broad view of the contexts Deliveroo is operating in. We took a multi-pronged participant recruitment approach, working with regional Deliveroo teams as well as the UK based research operations team. We also worked with a live translator so that our participants could speak in their native language. For the majority of interviews we set up and observed live orders taking place, which gave us the best possible insight into people’s behaviours (and lunch preferences).
We brought the payments team into the process throughout the project. In a sketching workshop after our first round of research, the team used the pain points we’d uncovered to generate solutions to the biggest pain points. These were made into prototypes which we then tested with users experiencing those pains. We also ran juicy playback sessions, stuffed to the brim with insights and stories. At the end of the project we ran another evidence-driven workshop to write experience principles for the team to own and use.
“Andrew and Maia’s research has been used by a number of teams in Deliveroo to inform the design of the basket and checkout customer experience. Tactical optimisations increased order volume by a few percent and their deep dive into meal cards helped build a new feature that generated a significant impact to the P&L.”
Rik Higham, Product Lead for Payments at Deliveroo
Our ‘Deliveroobles’ provided a basis for immediate action as well as longer term strategic thinking. Our recommendations about the design of the payments flow and the nuances of regional payment behaviours have already led to changes that increased orders and revenue. And our co-designed payments experience principles could be used by the team to inform future features. Our video showreels brought to life each of the key findings and ensured that the team could really get into the mindset of the customers in all the different regions we included.
We can help your product team to plan ahead with a clear understanding of your customers' biggest pain points, goals and context. We have capacity in 2023, so get in touch if you're interested.