Increase new merchants visibility on DoorDash
Merchants that have early success have 4x the amount of lifetime sales, are 45% less likely to churn, and stay on the platform 30% longer.
We invest significant resources in acquiring new Rx, and to fully leverage the value they bring, it's imperative that we prioritize their retention.
Company / Team
DoorDash / Merchant & Consumer
My Role
Researcher & Designer
Key Skills
User Research / Vision Design / Interaction Design / UI Design / Prototyping / Stakeholder Management
Problems we’re facing
1.
Merchants experience a cold start getting orders
New restaurants are buried in the app. “Now on DoorDash” and “Fastest Near You” are the main surfaces where new Rx are merchandised.
2.
Consumers are usually hesitant to try new restaurants
New restaurants are naturally disadvantaged as 1. they lack of quality signal and 2. lack of menu info makes decision making harder for new customers.
“Doordash does not generate any business, so its mostly a waste of time. ”
— Restaurant owner on DoorDash, since 2023
Our mission
Help restaurants establish a strong early foundation on the platform to foster their sustained success and growth on the DoorDash.
We want restaurants to start realizing the benefits of DoorDash right when they activate and want to showcase our new restaurants to our Cx as soon as possible.
We started with a 3-day design sprint to…
Find ways to provide healthy* new restaurants their fair share of impressions, and the needed signals to entice customers try a new-to-DD restaurant via social proof, incentives and stories.
* Healthy = 25% menu photo coverage, a header image and 80% uptime within the first 28 days.
Encourage customers to provide reviews/ratings to new restaurants.
Encourage restaurants to complete their store setup, and how we can help bridge the gap using various data sources connected to their store across other platforms (ex. Yelp).
Concepts were shared with the stakeholders
Milestone 1 - Store preview
New merchants are 43% more likely to hit Magic Moments (14 orders in the first 28 days) if they have their header and photos uploaded before post-activation, and 2x more likely to hit Magic Moments if they meet the uptime criteria post-activation.
Currently, there’s no holistic view for Mx to verify their information like menu items, pricing, hours etc. So we need to prioritize allowing merchants to see their store before going live.
Impact
Showing merchants a preview of their Store prior to Activation led to strong positive uplift in all relevant pre-activation readiness metrics (F1D Header, Logo, Photo Coverage, Uptime), and stat-sig uplift in F1D Logo Coverage (p-value: 0.04) and F28D uptime (p-value: 0.05). From this experiment, we learned that we can get Mx to upload photos, header and logo earlier in their lifecycle on DoorDash.
75.5%
of merchants with logo on the first day of sign-up
71.2%
of merchants with healthy uptime in the F28D