JUST EAT Takeaway.com (JET) is a leading online food delivery platform, operating in multiple countries worldwide and the result of the merger between the companies Just Eat and Takeaway.com. During the time of this merger I was acting as a interim Head of Product Design, facing an exciting yet challenging task
Our company, operating in numerous countries worldwide, connects millions of food lovers with their favorite restaurants daily. My role was to enhance the user experience across all touchpoints and develop a coherent, innovative UX strategy that would set us apart in an increasingly competitive market.
Together with 4 design managers and 2 principal designers, our goal was to create a seamless and personalized food ordering experience for users worldwide. This case study outlines our strategic approach to enhancing user experience at Just Takeaway.com, focusing on leadership, vision, and team collaboration.
The challenge we faced was multifaceted. The initial brief for enhancing the user experience at JUST EAT Takeaway.com was broad and open-ended, focusing on improving overall customer satisfaction and driving business growth. However, as we delved deeper into the available data and insights, the brief evolved and became more specific. It was clear that we needed a comprehensive UX strategy that went beyond mere satisfaction improvements.
We utilized knowledge from different framewors (like the Design Leadership Framework and Design Leadership Ignited) to arrive at an effective strategy. We focussed on three stages:
Where are we now - Assessing the situation and understanding the business context
Where do we want to be - Drafting a vision and objectives that would guide our strategy
How do we get there - Distilling themes and milestones from our insights
Our approach focussed on drafting a strategy through a series of collaborative workshops, stakeholder interviews, research analysis and data gathering. This would improve stakeholder alignment and buy-in, while also ensuring we would be closely aligned to the product and business objectives.
Note: This is a condensed view of all actions we did during the shaping of this strategy. I tried to highlight the key steps we took to get to a design strategy that supports the business and product and have limited the amount of external insights from company and product strategy
Where are we now?
To asses and understand our space we organized a series of cross-functional workshops and analyses. We began with a thorough audit of our existing systems and user experiences. We then analyzed the UX maturity within the company to understand where we stood and where we wanted to go. We identified we were at Level 2 of the Invision Design Maturity Scale.
Crucial insights emerged from stakeholder interviews and cross-functional workshops. It became clear that we needed to focus not only on the end-user but also on the internal processes that influence the user experience. In parallel, we conducted research on industry trends and performed a competitive analysis to better understand our position in the market. This is data we used for our research
Business analytics
We examined key performance indicators, including customer retention rates, average order values, customer support tickets, and delivery times across different markets.
User Research
Qualitative feedback from user interviews and usability tests provided insights into pain points and areas for improvement in the customer journey.
Customer Support Data
Analysis of support tickets and frequently asked questions revealed common issues faced by users.
Market and Trend Research
We studied industry trends, emerging technologies, and changing consumer behaviors in the food delivery sector.
Competitor Analysis
A thorough examination of competitors' offerings and strategies helped identify gaps and opportunities in the market.
Our company strategy is to empower every food moment, supplying the technology to bring everyone together, from customer and restaurants to deliverers and so for every moment of the day. Coming from our workshops with product stakeholders, one thing was very clear: "The food itself does not make us unique, the experience will", so how could we improve this experience?
As a team we we had a set of 3 workshops to refine the data we gathered and synthesize insights we could find and balance them with the product and business strategy. We created themes around these and prioritized on impact vs feasability. Two themes were clear, while some others had major overlap and related to design maturity within the organisation. The 3 main themes we identified:
Personalization
Our first theme focuses on personalization, leveraging data-driven insights to create tailored experiences that resonate with individual users, increasing engagement and repeat orders. Data showed that users were more likely to engage and make repeat orders when presented with personalized recommendations.
Omnichannel Experience
The second theme emphasizes the importance of an omnichannel experience, recognizing that our customers interact with our platform across various devices and touchpoints. This approach ensures a seamless and consistent journey, regardless of how or where users choose to engage with our service.
Design excellence
Our third pillar, inspired by the concept of design excellence as outlined in "Design Leadership Ignited," aims to elevate our design function to drive innovation and enhance meaningful customer experiences. We bundled some of our insights within this theme. This involves creating an organizational structure that fosters creativity, creating a voice of the customer program for advocacy and user insights, a process for continuous discovery and scaling the impact of design across the entire organization.
How do we get there?
To understand where we want to go we drafted a vision statement, based on a framework from "Radical product thinking", while we also assesed our UX maturity using the "Invision maturity index". From this process, our UX strategy crystallized: "Design excellence through data driven, personalized and omnichannel experience". This strategy encompassed several key points:
Design excellence
Create a unified design system to ensure consistency across all platforms.
Install a voice of the customer program for continuous discovery and user advocacy
Introduce a culture of experimentation and innovation within the organization.
Personalization
Integrate AI-driven personalization to offer relevant food options and increase user engagement.
Integrate agents into our support system to reduce friction
Provide improved tracking visibility to our orders
Omnichannel experience
Create a seamless omnichannel experience, allowing users to order anytime, anywhere.
Improved the accessibility and inclusivity of our platform.
Establish specialized teams, including a Platform team and an Accessibility team.
Based on our resarch, workshops and strategy we have defined our Nort Star metric to be "amount of orders delivered successfully". We can use a system like google's HEART metrics to support this main KPI in different parts of the consumer vertical and journey
Happiness: Measures customer satisfaction with the different parts of the customer experience.
Engagement: Tracks how frequently customers use the platform and how often they place an order.
Adoption: Monitors the growth of new users.
Retention: Focuses on keeping existing customers.
Task Success: Ensures efficient order completion and delivery.
Looking back