Informing Legislation

Online FSA Rating

In early 2016 the Food Standards Agency (FSA) invited Just Eat to assist it in informing future legislation impacting the online takeaway space.

 

  • The legislation’s objective was to ensure online takeaway businesses displayed relevant food hygiene information for restaurants, enabling consumers to make a better informed choice when ordering.
  • All online food providers and aggregators will have to display the FSA logo for each restaurant on their site once the legislation comes into effect.

Why Partner with
Just Eat?

Just Eat is constantly partnering with companies such Apple, Amazon and Microsoft by making the online food domain accessible for them to test new ideas and devices. Working with the government to inform legislation, was no different.

World Leading

Just Eat is the world’s leading digital food ordering company and operates in 13 markets around the world.

21.5 M Customers

During 2017 £1.9 billion worth of food was purchased in UK alone.

82,300 Restaurants

In the UK roughly one in every three restaurant is on Just Eat.

Unlock the online food domain

Just Eat had everything needed to unlock the online food domain for the government and its influence was going to be highly impactful to the online space.
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Qualitative Research

Understanding why consumers behave certain way, is key to making decisions at Just Eat. Their in-house user experience research capabilities complement their experiments and allows them to understand the “Why”.

A/B Testing

Just Eat has a rigorous experimentation culture, something that allowed the FSA to make data driven decisions.

THE NUMBERS

The SERP (Search Engine Results Page), where restaurants results are displayed, have about 13 data points per restaurant. Some cities like London have about 300 restaurants on a single SERP, which translate to customers having to process about 3,900 data points. We know that any change on these data points would be impactful for our conversion, therefore we approach any changes carefully by setting up hypothesis and then using qual and quant to prove or disprove them. Here is a quick case study about how two small changes on the SERP generated over a quarter million orders in a year.

Your Rating

Changes

Orders (target impact)

Orders (actual impact)

Just Eat had concerns around the initial proposals from the FSA, given that their approach was not thought out for small screens, numerous entry and data points. There were also implications around brand identity for us and our restaurant partners. 
I was leading the latest Just Eat global rebrand and as part of my leadership role I joined the team that was collaborating with the FSA with the ultimate goal to shape the legislation in a way that empowered our customers to make better decisions but didn’t impact the look and feel of our product.

It was absolute key for the success of my team to guide and influence the FSA on best UX and UI practices for their legislation, and as a result try to minimise the impact that the legislation would have on the new Just Eat global brand.

Our approach for informing the FSA was iterative with a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.
01

Voice of the customer

In 2015, 0.75% of customer comments related to food hygiene. We analysed it to identify current customer expectations.
View Comments
02

In-depth Interview

The main aim of this study was to see if the inclusion of an FSA badge impacted participants’ decision making process when choosing a restaurant to order from in different scenarios. The study was also used to gather participants reactions to FSA in general and understand how FSA is interpreted and it’s importance.
View Report
03

A/B Test - Badges on the SERP

The first A/B was a quick and dirty test (very little visual treatment done) to understand the impact that showing the FSA badge has on the SERP for new and returning user’s conversion.
View Results
04

UX Surgery - Badges on the SERP

Parallel to the A/B test we were running, we ran a usability research session to understand if people knew what the new FSA badge meant and if they interacted with it.
View Findings
05

UX Surgery - Badges on the Menu

In preparation for the next round of A/B testing we ran another quick usability research to inform the impact of the FSA badge on the menu page.
View Project
06

A/B Test - Badges on the Menu

The second A/B test had the same visual treatment but in a different part of the user journey for new and returning users. The badge was placed on the menu page and in the restaurant information page.
View Project
After speaking to 15 research participants and processing 100K orders with FSA information, we had a vision for our own product and recommendations for the FSA.

For Just Eat this was a balancing act comprising; compliance with the law, damaging restaurant profit and not hiding the information.

Just Eat Vision

To honour the user’s intention to leverage the hygiene ratings as a decision making data point. We know this is the case if the user interacts with the information at any point, in such case the information will be sticky for the rest of the journey, complemented with a dedicated filter to allow our customers to provide a range of ratings acceptable to them. If the user showed not intention to use hygiene rating, then the restaurant’s rating would only be available right before the users start to create their basket. We validated this approach with a final UX Surgery.
Play with prototype

Our recommendations to the FSA

After our quantitative and qualitative research in web and native platforms, we recommended the following to the FSA
Our main goal was to move them from being very prescriptive to understanding that digital experiences change constantly and that in order to future proof the legislation it made more sense to refer to the user journey and not a particular screen.

Flexible Assets

Create a comprehensive set of assets optimised for small screens as well as large so the online food ordering industry can present this information within the context of the customer experience.

Don’t be prescriptive

Do not legislate rules regarding the placement of the rating badge. Aggregators and online restaurants should be allowed to optimise the placement of the FSA information for their customers, given that they will be catering for different needs and behaviours.

Co-branding is a challenge

In the case of online aggregators at lease three brands will be on the screen; so the FSA branding should not over take the UI.

Honour user’s intention

Encourage aggregators to give customers the option of filtering restaurants by their food hygiene rating. Food hygiene ratings on search result pages should not be mandatory as there’s often a lot of other decision-crucial information being displayed and the ratings could be difficult to implement. It should be an option if the customer has expressed a desire to use it in their decision-making process.

On April 2017 the FSA issued a consultation titled The Food Hygiene Rating (Online Display) Regulations (Northern Ireland) with the purpose of seeking views and comments from stakeholders on the draft for their regulation. Below are the regulations that our recommendations shaped and how the FSA responded to other stakeholder’s comments on the regulation.
REGULATION 2: ONLINE PROVISION OF FOOD HYGIENE RATING
Food business will have to display an icon representing the valid food hygiene rating for the establishment the online ordering facility relates to.
Such an icon must be located where it can be readily seen and easily read at the point food can be selected to order.

Question 3 – Do you have any comments on Regulation 2 regarding the location and manner of display of food hygiene icon?

The icon representing the valid food rating is displayed at the earliest opportunity on the business website and prior to food being selected.

Derry City and Strabane District Council

Following independent consumer research and extensive stakeholder engagement carried out by the FSA, it was determined the most relevant place for the food hygiene rating icon to be displayed is at the point where food can be selected for order.

FSA Response

FHRS (FSA) Online display icon/badge 
Independent research into the design of an online food hygiene rating has now been concluded and digital icons have been produced, these icons are provided in Annex F. The icons/badges have been designed to cater for all online platforms and can be freely accessed from the FSA.

Question 7 – Do you have any comments or views on the design and usage of the draft icons/badges.

The icon design should be prescribed in the Regulations and that all the icons are visually consistent with the prescribed forms in Regulation 4 of the Food Hygiene Rating Regulations (NI) 2016.

Derry City and Strabane District Council

Icon design as it physically exists is not viable on online platforms due to accessibility issues and therefore had to be modified. As the online environment is dynamic and ever changing and in order to future proof the FSA have decided not to prescribe the icon design in legislation.

FSA Response

From the different designs, the Impact Badge is clear and should aid in customers understanding of the food hygiene rating score assigned to a food business post food hygiene inspection.

ASDA Response

Preview badge

Use this badge when listing more than one outlet or business on a page e.g. listing multiple restaurants.

Impact badge

Use this badge to emphasize the food hygiene rating. Should be displayed at the point food can be selected to order’. It can also be displayed on the homepage or other pages.

Simple two-line badge

Use this alternative badge to provide your food hygiene rating. Should be displayed at the point food can be selected to order’. It can also be displayed on the homepage or other pages.

The outcome

Before

Vision

Future