Select Page

Papa Johns Usability Test

Understanding the experience and expectations of customers when using the Papa John's website.

Research  |  Usability Testing  |

THE CHALLENGE

Papa John’s is an American pizza restaurant franchise. It’s the fourth largest delivery chain in the United States. In this fictitious school project, Papa John’s was looking to re-design their website to improve the online ordering process. We were tasked with conducting usability tests to understand the ease of use of the website, uncover usability issues, and understand user expectations. The output was a formal recommendation report. 

Project and Testing Objectives

Overall Research Objectives

  • Learn more about the experiences and expectations of customers when using the Papa John’s website
  • Uncover usability issues with the Papa John’s online ordering experience
  • Understand if and what demographic variables may affect the customers’ experience when using the Papa John’s website

Usability Testing Objectives and Metrics

  • Validate if the online ordering process aligns with how users might interact with the website
  • Observe how participants work with the site to discover how to make the workflow intuitive
  • See how quickly the participant performs common tasks and uncovers any obstacles that prevent task completion
  • Evaluate if there is an appropriate balance of ease of use and ease of learning

MY ROLE

For this fictitious school project, I performed usability testing on the desktop Papa John’s website. This included creating a screener for participants, reviewing the tasks and scenarios, performing the usability tests, analyzing the results, and creating a final report. 

THE APPROACH

Usability Testing

To gain a broad understanding of system usability, multiple 15 to 20-minute in-person usability tests were conducted with users who had ordered pizza online before, in which these users completed a common set of scenarios and tasks. From these tests, usability issues were compiled and assigned a severity rating.

Overview of Session

  • Introduction + disclaimers
  • Pre-task questions
  • Ice breaker
  • Task 1: Order three (3) pizzas
  • Task 2: Sign up for deals and coupons
  • Task 3: Contact corporate
  • Wrap-up

Note on Users:

  • Usability testing typically needs a minimum of 7-10 users for definitive findings. While multiple individual tests were conducted, this report only covers response from four (4) users.
  • The four users included in this report were a mix between two males and two females with varying ages and ethnicities.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Overall Issues Found

We discovered 16 issues and provided recommendations for:

  • 1 Critical Issue
  • 3 Moderate Issues
  • 7 Minor Issues
  • 5 Insight or Suggestions

Expectations of Online Ordering

  • When talking about previous experiences with ordering pizza, users described their expectation of quick (ordering by phone “is quicker”) and easy
  • No users failed any tasks related specifically to ordering – although users did approach ordering in different ways and most hesitated when moving between the tabs of base, cheese, meats and veggies
  • Once users ordered the first pizza they quickly learned how Customize worked and were able to quickly order subsequent pizzas.

Below is an example page of the findings report given: