How Nando’s Site Improved Sales 605% in Two Months

Not long ago, global fast food chain Nando’s was suffering from death-by-distractions in their online ordering portal.

The spicy peri-peri chicken giant has been one of the fastest growing fast food chains in Australia in recent decades. It boasts over 270 outlets, and a 4.1% share of the fast food market in Australia.

But their online ordering portal – mostly used for large catering orders – wasn’t performing quite as well.

Analytics data showed the problem was a big drop-off rate in their shopping cart.

Two simple tweaks removed decisions and distractions from their ordering process – and provided a combined sales increase of 605%.

1. More is less. Less is more.

The first change that led to a huge increase in completed sales was simply making menu items less visible.

Across the left-hand navigation menu of the page was a series of catering packages.

It was a logical place to list these packages.

The principles of good User Experience and User Design suggest that making key options as visible as possible, and easy to navigate to, are good for the user. But in this case, good design principles were damaging sales.

The catering packages listed on the left hand side of the page were so visible, and so enticing, that they were causing users to second-guess themselves.

(“Am I picking the right package?”; “Is there a better package I could pick?”)

Eventually, decision-fatigue would set in. The user would run out of energy to second-guess themselves, and simply leave the site without completing an order.

Bravely, Nando’s allowed us to test removing this menu entirely.

It was an audacious change – in direct contrast to the well-meaning advice of some very skilled and trusted graphic designers who had the best interests of Nando’s brand at heart.

For their courage, Nando’s was rewarded with a 417% increase in sales from this test (99% confidence interval).

But the testing didn’t stop there!

2. There’s No Going Back

Even after removing the distracting menu, customers continued to second-guess themselves – and press the “Back” button in the shopping cart.

In a second round of testing, Nando’s compared a version of their shopping cart with a “Back” button, and a version of their shopping cart without.

The result was a further 45.28% increase in sales (92% confidence interval).

Based on the test data, these two minor tweaks stood to increase sales by a whopping 605%.

That’s certainly not chicken-feed!