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Case Study
OpenTable is rarely the starting point for those who have not made up their mind. For those who have, they love OpenTable for the simplicity, ease, convenience, and reliability of making online restaurant reservations.
There’s a huge opportunity to expand people’s perception of what OpenTable can offer beyond the transactional experience. How might we support the undecided diners and be the starting point of their decision-making process when it comes to dining?
As a north star, we want people to perceive the brand as truly comprehensive, personalized, inspiring, global, local, and insightful — attributes that are essential to becoming top of mind for all dining decisions. The Tastemakers Lists are the output from various research and workshops to achieve OpenTable’s objective to become people’s starting point of discovery for their dining experiences.
How might we support the undecided diners and be the starting point of their decision-making process when it comes to dining?
In summer 2017, our team did an extensive user research with our dining and restaurant communities in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York to get a better understanding on habits, motivations, and influences around eating and dining out. Findings from qualitative and quantitative research informed the strategy and tactics that led to creation of OpenTable’s Tastemakers Lists.
My role in the Tastemakers project is to guide the team from start to finish, define product values that align to the business goals, and direct the overall product experience.
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Insights
Recommendations from friends and family are powerful motivators for trying a new restaurant.
Fresh and bite-sized content matters.
People don’t associate OpenTable with attributes that are key to becoming a source of discovery.
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Data
“Best of” searches grew by 80% between 2015 – 2018.
68% of surveyed diner use lists as a way to generate ideas for dining out.
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Opportunities
How might we get in front of diners even before they think about us?
How might we empower people to make confident dining decisions?
How might we build and reinforce trust toward the OpenTable brand?
I’ll get restaurant ideas from my sister or from my foodie friends.
Brand expression explorations led by our Brand Design team
Restaurant content explorations. Designers: Yuebo Wang and Patti Lo
Several facts informed initial key decisions of the project. We know that search is the entry point for most people’s activity online, and a significant amount of OpenTable traffic comes from organic search. With those facts in mind, the Tastemakers Lists started as a web product first and top search keywords (Best Italian, Best brunch, Best local restaurants…) would provide the content direction for the lists. By increasing OpenTable’s web footprint and creating content that are relevant to what people are looking for, we’re increasing the chance diners will discover and interact with OpenTable.
Starting with web does not mean that we’re not thinking mobile-first. Yuebo Wang, the lead designer, thoroughly thought through how people would find, consume, and interact with the lists through their mobile devices. His exploration covered aspects such information density to view port sizes ratio, map interaction, and performance, to name a few.
Search is the entry point for most people’s activity online, and a significant amount of OpenTable traffic comes from organic search.
How visitors can discover the Tastemakers’ List from any restaurant profiles, which is OpenTable’s top landing experience
Post v1 launch, the team closely monitors and uses the incoming data and user feedback to optimize the content and UI strategies of the lists. The lists should always keep up and match diners’ evolving intent and expectation. The product scope has expanded and evolved since its first launch. Withing a year, the lists have scaled to over 1,000+ Tastemakers Lists with over 20 topics and over 15 cities, and have had presence across all OpenTable platforms and core landing pages.
