The Challenges of Online Meal Ordering Platforms: Website Design and Credibility, Customers’ Trust, and Food Safety

Abstract

In modern societies using online meal ordering platforms becomes an emerging culture for Chinese citizens. The majority of the ordering platforms are based on smart phone applications. However, little research has been done on the credibility of online meal ordering applications and how to improve the design of these applications in China. Moreover, users of these applications begin to question about the credibility of these applications and trust issues appear. We investigate the challenges that these online meal ordering platforms face, for example, customers’ trust and its application credibility. We send out online surveys to explore the reasons why these customers use these applications. We conduct interviews to investigate the reviews of these application users and the users’ design suggestions for these applications. Observation has been conducted in order to better design the applications for these companies. The data show that the reasons why customers choose a meal ordering application are that 43.23% of the customers pay attention to various kinds of restaurants offered by the applications and 34.84% of them prefer low deliver fees. Well-designed application interfaces also attract 12.9% of the participants to use these applications. It also show that the participants concern about the information organization of the application design. Better navigation and information organization are expected for the platforms. We investigate the challenges that the online meal ordering platforms face, for example, website design, customers’ trust, and application credibility. This paper aims to provide design guidelines for these ordering platform companies to improve their application credibility and gain trust from their customers.