Concept & Ideation
Based on our analysis of the interviews and research, we’ve identified these key design principles to guide us moving forward:
01_
User Friendly
intuitive and easy to use for both restaurant owners and customers.
02_
Flexability
various customization options, allowing restaurant owners to tailor it to their specific needs.
04_
Security
Robust security measures were implemented to protect customer payment information.
03_
Integration
The feature would seamlessly integrated with Wix's existing reservation system, both back and front side.
Deposit Feature
@Wix Table Reservations app
Restaurant owners worldwide face the recurring issue of no-shows and late cancellations. This not only impacts their revenue but also strains their resources, leading to potential losses. The challenge here was to empower restaurant owners with a friendly and flexible solution, seamlessly integrated into the existing reservation app, that would bring back control. A long-awaited game changer for restaurant owners and the hospitality business: the Deposit Feature.
The challenge
Allowing restaurant owners to easily collect a deposit from customers when makeing a reservation, providing greater financial security, boosting revenue, and reducing the impact of last-minute cancellations and no-shows.
I planned and designed the user journey and feature architecture based on the insights we gathered, ensuring the flow remained as simple as possible, as outlined below
Discovery and Research
The Wix Restaurants company provides a comprehensive suite of tools for the food industry such as, Online Orders, Menus showcase and Table reservations. One of Wix’s major advantage is their range of users and partners. As part of our ongoing work we are conducting user talks, collecting feature requests, performing AB tests and beta versions. All these allow the product team to be always on track with desired features and adjustments. We had many talks with our users in order to understand their needs and challenges and gain insights regarding this task. This new feature at the Table Reservation app was a huge obstacle for potential new users in order to migrate and a big feature request from existing users.
Business Analysis
We analyzed well known and new reservation apps that implemented deposit features in their product.
The main findings included:
There is a big range of ux:
from simple solution with no flexibility up to complex forms with multiple settings options.
Payment Flexibility: Successful competitors offered multiple payment methods, which customers appreciated.
Sometimes this feature comes hand in hand with other settings we don’t yet offer like shift management, and scheduled experiences.
User Interviews
We conducted 12 interviews, 7 with existing users and 5 with potential ones. We gain lots of information on the industry standard and the business and restaurant requirements. Main insights could be divided to two: User Goal and User needs.
User Goals
Zero waste of resources
Avoid under booking
Give customer simple and safe experiance
User Needs
Flexible audience, dates, time and rates
Quick and easy setup and edit
Easily switch on and off
Detail Design
The Impact
The first phase of the feature launch, which focused on a lean implementation, has proven successful with Wix's restaurant user base. We received excellent feedback, with users who had been eagerly awaiting this functionality expressing great satisfaction. Further enhancements are in development, but this initial release represents a major step forward, removing a key obstacle for potential new users. Early results show a significant decrease in no-shows and a corresponding increase in revenue for many restaurant owners, contributing to an improved user experience within the Wix Restaurant app.
The deposit feature, as a comprehensive solution to be integrated within an existing app, involves multiple touchpoints. I sketched the wireframes for these touch points.
