Wawa: Online Ordering
Experience Strategy

The Work

At the time of the project, our client had 5 main ways to place and fulfill an order:

1. In-store Kiosk

2. Mobile App Order, In-store Pickup

3. Mobile App Order, Curbside Pickup

4. Third Party Delivery

5. Catering (Web)

One of our goals in the experience strategy phase was to understand the current state of all these pathways and how they fit together holistically.

We conducted stakeholder interviews, store visits, and customer intercepts to better understand the current state at Wawa.

I. Stakeholder Interviews
We spoke to 16 corporate employees in different roles to get a sense of their objectives, vision, and questions for digital.

• How do we create a more intuitive process in all ordering methods without upsetting the existing customer base?

• How do we win or maintain customer trust throughout the stages of an eCommerce journey?

• How could we deepen personal relationships and brand moments with an already-engaged customer base?

II. Store Visits
Our team visited 5 stores in different areas to dive deeper into the store associate and customer journeys. In each store, we were able to go behind the assembly line to observe the process and conduct short interviews with 10 on-site associates and managers. We also took note of store layout, physical wayfinding, digital signage, and live customer/associate behavior.

Being able to see the associates’ interactions with the customers quickly validated and expanded on known issues from the client.

• Associates use an inventory system that is difficult to browse/search

• Inventory system may not be synched to customer-facing kiosks, giving store associates the extra task of troubleshooting, explaining, and modifying orders on the spot

• Customers who did not understand in-store processes would often stop associates working the food prep line to ask for help

• Recipe screens on the food line were hard to read and could overflow especially during rush hour

• Incoming mobile orders further complicate and crowd the order screens

III. Customer Intercepts
Finally, during store visits, we intercepted 26 real customers on-site and offered them gift cards in exchange for a brief 5-minute customer research session, focusing on their relationship and experience with the store, and the efficacy of loyalty programs.

Our customer intercepts validated the split between seasoned customers who are locked into the process versus new customers who were confused by the steps. In general, all felt positively about Wawa and considered it to be affordable, clean, and with excellent customer service.

The biggest takeaway from our intercepts was that even among those who were regular, sometimes lifelong customers, awareness and usage of digital ordering outside of the store was extremely low.

• Mobile app can be annoying to use with inefficient user flows and too many notifications/emails

• Benefits of the loyalty program were not appealing enough to bother downloading, using, and tracking progress on the app

• Most were unaware that special services like catering were even offered

• Relatively few made use of third party delivery vendors or curbside and lived so close to a physical Wawa that they preferred to go in themselves

We also crafted a customer-focused competitive audit that included 8 other comparable franchises in the US and 6 out-of-market examples, for inspiration and gauging the baseline experience.

Ultimately, we found that Wawa ranked low against popular contenders like Starbucks, McDonalds, and 7/11 in terms of the digital experience. The strongest franchises had robust content and organization for their food products, modern design patterns, cohesive omnichannel experiences, and loyalty programs. Meanwhile, Wawa’s mobile app was very basic and did not tie in with web or the kiosk, both of which were outdated and difficult to navigate.

Through this audit, we saw plenty of opportunity to create more engaging experiences that would bring value to both already-loyal and brand-new customers.

To align our team and our stakeholders, we brought all the research together into journey maps for each ordering method, which we collaborated on with the client. In each session, we also led our clients in identifying additional challenges and brainstorming potential solutions.

As we reviewed these opportunities for improvement, our team began to distill the themes down into experience pillars.

The experience should be:

1. Convenient for both associates and customers to quickly get the information they need to prepare, pay, and pick up their food.

2. Transparent in product information, communications to users, and company/brand values to build customer trust.

3. Flexible enough to allow users enough options to suit different needs in how to order, pay for, and receive their orders.

4. Personalized to users to anticipate their dietary, product, and payment preferences throughout the journey.

5. Playful in style and messaging to maintain the familiar, comfortable brand image that is so iconic to their loyal customer base.

We leaned on these pillars as we imagined and organized future experiences in preparation of sprint work, and tagged each primary opportunity with a pillar on the updated, visually designed iterations of our journey maps suitable for company-wides socialization.

As we entered our first design sprint, the team facilitated a sketching session for one of our first features in the backlog: the ability to select a store from which to order.

In these sessions, we brought together current pain points, competitive inspiration, and detailed requirements from story planning sessions to sketch ideas and discuss outstanding questions.

• What store information is most critical for users to know?

• What about users who don’t live in areas with a Wawa?

• How could we leverage user data and preferences to make this step quicker and easier?

Using the sketches and ideas as input, our creative team designed wireframes to start visualizing the catering flow.

The Result

I left the agency to pursue a new opportunity just after creating these early wireframes, so I did not have insight into how the rest of the project played out; however, I can say that our clients were jumping to get deeper into detailed design and development for Catering and made great use of the research and experience strategy work we did in the first phase.

Before I left, we were able to present our findings and artifacts to not only multiple C-suite executives but also the entirety of the client HQ office. As part of an effort to share the digital initiatives going on in the company, our clients had set up a dedicated day for our team, Deloitte, and HCL to exhibit the work done to date and vision for the future. In addition to formal readouts, we set up a “science fair”-style exhibit so that employees could come by at their leisure to learn more and better understand how their own work fit into these projects.