Fast Food Usability Series: Wendy's Case Study

This is part one in a multi-part series on usability issues with fast food eCommerce websites. We visited fast food restaurants to test how real-life users experience ordering through their websites. In each part, we'll highlight the usability problems (and possibly some successes) we discovered while performing guerrilla user testing⁽¹⁾ at popular fast food restaurant locations.

We'll also offer suggestions on improving each website for higher conversions and customer satisfaction. 

Why Study Restaurant eCommerce?

Restaurant eCommerce ordering is worth studying for a variety of reasons:

• Restaurants have some of the highest conversion rates in the industry⁽²⁾, making them easier to study because their user base is very motivated to complete a transaction.
• Restaurants have complex menus with many options, bundling, and pricing configurations.
• Restaurants require users to select a store location and often choose between pickup or delivery options, which adds steps and complexity to the checkout flow.
• There are a tremendous amount of different restaurants and design solutions to compare.

With this series, you will learn from fast food’s successes and failures. Let's get started! 

Case Study: Wendy’s

For part one of our series, we studied users ordering at http://wendys.com. By testing and evaluating how users navigate the site, we will discuss some of the biggest problems and show some suggestions on how each issue could be solved.

Usability Issue: Unclear Call To Action

The first usability issue is unclear call-to-action buttons on Wendy's home page. The CTA buttons are placed very close together, creating the opportunity to pick the wrong one, slowing users and preventing them from completing their transactions.

Usability Issue: Full Page Loading Screen

A repeating animated loading screen opens when a user picks either CTA button from the home page. This animation fails to offer any helpful feedback and only slows the users' ordering process. 

Solution: Remove Extra Step

A better solution would be to remove the animation screen and send users directly to the next page. This issue can be corrected by better Front-end engineering practices and asynchronous loading of resources.

Usability Issue: Hidden Promotion Value

Wendy’s forces users to register before showing the promotions they might receive.  When users select the Offers button at the top of Wendy's menu, they are sent to a new modal screen asking them to sign up for rewards and exclusive offers. However, the site fails to list what offers the users will receive for completing this action. When all the user wanted was to view the special offers.

Wendy's screen shows the user there are offers available, but it does not display what the offers are or what a user will receive for signing up. 

Watch a short clip of a user trying to navigate to the Offers, but they quickly abandon exploring the promotions when they see the registration page.

Wendy's mistake is when they fail to supply information about the specific offers or deals⁽⁴⁾, causing user hesitation and confusion. 

Solution: Descriptive Text

Let's take a look at another competitive example. Arby's registration page shows how descriptive text can move users quickly through the ordering process. Arby's displays the offer above the registration section, allowing a quick understanding of the form's goal and its value to the user. 

Wendy's could have used descriptive text to better position the benefit of registering for offers. A better description of the offers would reduce user hesitation and improve the ordering flow. 

Usability Issue: Lagging Response 

Responsiveness is another usability issue on Wendy's site. The video below shows the lag in the system response to a user's action. The delay between selecting a button and the interface updating is confusing to users and slows the conversion process.

The following two videos show users' confusion over the slow response when trying to build a combo.

The first video shows the user closing the drink selection instead of continuing with the selection.