Indecisiveness while food ordering
Most of us are familiar with Zomato, India’s largest Food Delivery, Dining, and Restaurant Discovery Service. Before Zomato became popular, it was foodiebay, an online food guide and restaurant directory.
Now also, Zomato is an app that revolves around restaurants and food. Besides ordering food, Zomato provides various services, like searching for restaurants, reading reviews, and every essential detail about the restaurant that the user may want to know. In addition, the dining feature allows users to book a table in their desired restaurant. Overall, Zomato is an all-in-one app for foodies.
Zomato has increased its market by turning more people into foodies. People are only used to ordering food or eating out occasionally, though, after the arrival of Zomato, they also have started doing so. People not only order when they are hungry but also when bored. I have met many people who scroll through Zomato’s offer section when bored and end up placing an order. Going through different users’ digital well-being statistics gives exciting information about how long user spends on the zomato app. Well, eating was never a bad idea.
Zomato and other food delivery apps provide as many possible options to the users; different people have different choices, and they need to. But there are other cases, sometimes giving too many options can be overwhelming for the users; also, sometimes they drop the idea of ordering food because of the confusion and cook something which sounds more easy for them, like cooking instant noodles when they need more clarification about what to call. Giving customers many options overpowers them and leads to confusion. Users repeatedly buy restricted items because they are hesitant to try something new. This leads to users missing out on many things. People often close the app before ordering anything because they see the same repeated stuff on their screen. It’s more like they want to try something new, but they are hesitant at the same time.
The fact that biryani is the most ordered item in India will not help the person in the northeast to decide what to order. It’s just a nice-to-have fact.
This problem becomes even more accurate when the buyer has given the task of ordering for a group when he’s ordering something for his family or friends. Now, he has to make a choice that aligns with the liking of other people in the room. Now there are too many options, too many people, and so much confusion. Talking to people revealed that it often annoys them when they have to order for someone else.
Social proof is a situation where people look to the decisions of others to guide their behavior in a given case. This can take the form of copying the actions of others or conforming to the perceived norm or majority opinion.
Studies show that people adopt social motives to avoid being judged as indecisive, which induces them to form socially appropriate ‘right’ decisions. This helps companies in helping the user with their indecisiveness by listing trending products. Various famous companies use this similar approach.
Let’s see the famous online shopping company Amazon as an example.
Here is a screenshot of the desktop site of Amazon.com. Since this is an international site, and unlike zomato, the orders can be placed internationally.
If we see the example of Amazon.in, which delivers products pan India, it lists special sections where popular products appear category-wise.
The same goes for Flipkart also.
In the above examples, the company is helping users make purchases. The buyer gets an idea of what they want to purchase from the trending section. Of course, many other things come into the equation while discussing e-commerce sites, but things change for food delivery.
This is a collaborative effort where one user is indirectly helping the other by rating the item and making them land on the trending page.
Things change when we talk about food ordering apps, You can only order from restaurants in a specific area. If you want to end your customer’s anxiety while buying something, you have to show him what he may like.
Food ordering companies are implementing changes in this area by showing them dishes, but adding more social proof can improve the situation. For example, listing a section showing trending items from a specific restaurant in their area. In addition, the trending page may contain other sub-pages that list grossing restaurants’ specialties.
