How to improve UX, drop sales by 10%, and then fix it

Gojek is an Indonesian company that has collected many services in one application, from calling a taxi to online shopping. One of their products is a restaurant food delivery service, Gofood.

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Problem

Approximately 20% of service users put an order in the cart, but did not complete it. It was necessary to understand why this is happening and to reduce the number of abandoned carts.

The company s UX specialists studied users in detail, then analyzed the check-out page and concluded that it was too long. All information was located on one page: first there was a list of ordered dishes (without photos), below it – the delivery address, below it – information about the payment method, applied discount coupons, payment amount and delivery amount. It all took two or three screens.

Solution 1. Failure

To simplify the checkout process, UX professionals have broken it down into two steps. The first displayed a list of ordered dishes (they added photos to each ordered dish), the second displayed the address and payment information. The transition to the second step occurred by clicking on the “Next” button

Orders dropped by 10%, which came as a complete surprise to the product team.

Solution 2. Failure

After analyzing the reasons for the failure, analysts saw that most users simply do not make it to the second step. Perhaps they were afraid that by clicking the “Next” button, they would place an order without specifying the address and payment method. To alleviate this fear, UX professionals renamed the button to Go to Checkout, but that didn t help.

Solution 3. Success

Then they decided to go back to the option with placing all the information on one page, but the page was restructured. At the very top, they placed the delivery address, then – a list of ordered dishes, then – payment information. The pay button was attached to the bottom edge of the screen so that it was always visible.

This corrected the situation: orders increased by 5% compared to the level that they had before the start of the project. For a service with a multimillion audience, this means a fairly large increase in profits.

conclusions

What conclusions can we draw from this?

1. The first and obvious solution is not always the right one;
2. If they had tested prototypes with users before implementing changes to the application, they would have avoided failure with the first solution and saved development time;
3. It is important not to be afraid to admit your mistakes and, if necessary, to abandon the hard-won decisions that did not work;
4. Gojek employees are great because they were not afraid to share this story 🙂

Links for the curious

The first part of the story (about the problem, the original version of the application and analytics)

The second part of the story (about how they came to the first decision). The part may be interesting for those who are engaged in UX copywriting, because, in addition to the basket, they reworked various informational messages, and it turned out very nice.

The final part of the story (about the failure of the first decision and the correction of the situation)