Usability Evaluation of an Unpopular Restaurant Recommender Web Application Zomato

Abstract

Usability evaluation clarifies the user’s comfortability, satisfaction, and experience with a product. The success of the product is solely dependent on the usability factor. Web applications are excellent channels to communicate between the customers and the suppliers, for satisfying users' needs. Particularly usability evaluation of web applications plays an important role in observing the design, content, and navigation of a website. These observations help to improve the design of a web application. A proper design and content management of a web application acts as a gateway to attract more customers to use their application. Customer satisfaction would also help increase business for that particular company. The restaurant recommender web application acts as a medium for customers and restaurants. These applications help the food industry to attract customers. If the mode of communication is not effective, restaurants fail to promote their food business to the customers.  Previous research studies focused on business models, restaurant reviews, and offers provided by restaurant recommenders, instead of usability evaluation.  The goal of this research study is to test the efficiency and effectiveness of zomato.com through usability evaluation. The importance of this research study is to help both Zomato and other applications to increase their popularity. The methodology used was both think aloud and observations. The results were satisfactory and informative. The average time taken for website navigation tasks was 20.5 minutes. 100% satisfaction with restaurant reviews. 33% satisfaction for restaurant search and location information. 33% were not willing to re-use the Zomato website. These results convey that user satisfaction plays a major role in users returning to a website. This could be one reason for less web usage traffic in Zomato, hence leading to unpopularity. Recommendations and future research were also discussed.