An AGILE approach to uplift the food-delivery experience at Zomato

Zomato is one of India’s leading online food delivery apps which began service in 2008. As of 2020, it has been downloaded on almost 1 in every 10 smart phones and processes over 1.25 million orders on any given day across 437 cities. The fundamental value proposition to consumers includes the possibility of checking restaurant menus and ordering food online, and viewing restaurant properties and making online reservations. Additionally, new features provide visibility on time to food delivery and flexibility in terms of multiple payment solutions. While it is a leading market player given that together with Swiggy, its nearest rival, it has ~80% market share, customers have often expressed pain points with regards to its cluttered interface and lack of sophisticated search functionalities. In times to come, 3–4 new product features such as rate/review restaurant, and enhanced filters for search and online ordering are planned for release. The ideation, design, implementation, testing and deployment of these features is being planned using the agile methodology.

The agile methodology of product development supports an incremental and iterative way to develop products and software. The incremental approach allows delivery of finished components of the whole in parts i.e. a staggered release of features, as opposed to a one-time release of the entire product or feature set, resulting in a diversification of risk. Moreover, this approach is complementary to the iterative methodology which enables incorporation of instant customer feedback and measurement of customer success at multiple levels of the product development process. In this way, the agile method and flexible gestation period ensure that the product development process remains responsive to changing customer needs, technology developments and market realities.

For the 3 planned features in the pipeline, the agile methodology would be implemented as follows: first, the product team would conduct consumer research with the objective of identifying current feature gaps and pain points as well as the desired end-experience for the most valuable and the largest customer segments on Zomato. Simultaneously, the team would conduct and leverage research on existing competitor offerings to arrive at a tentative set of product requirements and alternatives. In an overlapping fashion, based on these requirements, the team would develop mockups and wireframes to showcase a set of options that are work in progress to a survey sample of the target customer segments. The team would then iterate on its product design and plan based on customer feedback.

1. Rate/Review Restaurant: An example of how incremental feature development would proceed is as follows : instead of developing the entire new final review page and experience, the team would develop a portion of the page e.g. a review/rating option with pre-fixed user determined criteria and then share this with customers to seek additional feedback. Based on this feedback, the team would iterate on this portion of the review page, as well as the design, layout and functionality of the remaining portions of the page, adapting to changes in light of emerging customer expectations and product requirements.
2. Search Filters: According to customer feedback, while allowing for search by dishes/restaurants, current search filters at Zomato are not nuanced enough to search for “popular in the area” / or responsive to “recent order history” and need a better user interface design overall. An incremental development approach here would involve design and testing of the “popular in the area” functionality with users, and identification of subsequent customer search expectations to prioritize other improvements in the search algorithm. Similarly, in case of user interface design, the most problematic portion of the page / feature could be fixed at first and tested with customers, with design iterations based on customer feedback.
3. Online Ordering Filters: Based on user surveys, the product team would identify a set of priority online ordering features and capabilities, for example, this could be visibility on time to arrival, historical delivery success etc. The incremental approach here would be to try one filter or one enhancement and addition to the online ordering experience at a time, seek customer feedback before iterating upon and introducing other online ordering features.

In this way, the agile methodology can allow for time and cost saving as well as continual responsiveness to changing customer preferences and evolving technologies — and Zomato would benefit from a staggered release of these features and sub-features as opposed to a one-time release of an entirely new product experience that could be risky.