Why Mobile Ordering Has Failed (and Why It’s Ready For rebirth)

Who has been to Starbucks or Tim Horton’s (for the Canadians in the audience) sometime in the last several years? No doubt, most of us have. We’ve also witnessed relentless begging and pleading: “hey, download our app,” “skip the wait,” “order from your phone.”

Mobile ordering technology has lots to offer, so why are companies like Starbucks having trouble selling it to customers? That is, four years in, why does the Starbucks app only account for 12% of sales? There’s a reason for this, it’s a term borrowed from tech companies. The term is UX (User Experience). In essence, UX is “how hard do I have to think to use this?” We don’t often think of UX as something that exists outside of the software itself, but we ought to. The fact is, the user experience of your app itself may be 100%, 10 star, bang-on awesome. How can I get your application? Do I have to jump through hoops before I can even use the thing? In the case of most mobile ordering systems, the companies offering them don’t make them easy to start using. Here, we have the first 99 nails in the coffin.

UX has become a bit of a buzzword in recent times. There’s one glaring issue with the adoption of mobile ordering technology. Developers of these technologies are treating the user experience and the cost of switching as one issue. The cost of switching is the sum of all the obstacles a customer needs to dodge to use the technology. For most mobile ordering apps, there are several issues in the chain of events leading to usage.

1. Scan a QR code or visit a link. (“okay, I’ll get over it”)
2. Download and install the app. (“wait, the app is 70MB????”)
3. Get the credit card out and type it into the app. (“no bloody way!!”)
4. Choose what to order. (“finally holy #@$#!”)]

You only need to do steps 1–3 once, but it’s a lot of work when customers are in a rush to get their coffee. The usability of the application includes everything from step 1 through step 4. Traditional UX testing and design only focuses on step 4 and beyond.

Companies like Starbucks have tried to increase adoption through bribery. They try adding discounts, free swag, and rewards programs. If only they knew how to reduce the cost of switching (from ordering at the counter to ordering by phone)! Make my life easier, that’s what I want! So what do we have to do? We have to remove the obstacles. What happens if we improve so customers no longer have to do step 2 and 3, how does our adoption change? Well, if all I need to do is visit a link and place an order, that’s a pretty similar task to casual web browsing. Casual web browsing is a filler task that most people are already quite familiar with. Maybe we could also remove step one, but it would require a lot of work to put in place and the improvement would be incremental at best.

Great work team! Now, our customers only need to visit a link and choose their order. This is the least number of steps possible leveraging current technology. Until we have brain implants that know when and what you want to order, there’s not much more we can do.

Mobile ordering is a fantastic concept. There’s tremendous value-add for both sides of the transaction. Customers get their food faster and don’t waste time standing in lines, businesses serve the same number of customers with dramatically lower costs. This frees time that staff can now use for completing other important tasks. It’s a shame that up until now, mobile ordering has been implemented so poorly.

So what’s the best way to turn the current mobile ordering paradigm on its head? Make ordering food as easy for me to do as browsing the web or messaging a friend. The way to do this is NOT with traditional app store-based apps. We need to leverage modern web technologies to get the benefits of increased staff efficiency and lower service costs.

So what did we learn? People don’t think about how much it sucks to stand in line at Starbucks when they’re at home watching TV. You have to catch them when the pain is real (and current), and make the cost of switching as low as possible. When all I have to do is open a browser at the restaurant, tap once for my items and again to pay, then the mobile ordering war will be won.