Skipcart: Driver Experience Competitive Analysis

Skipcart is a last-mile delivery startup that was acquired by 7-Eleven, with the ambitious goal of transforming it into a formidable competitor against current industry giants. We found ourselves with new leadership, a new team, and minimal understanding of the driver experience in the delivery app industry. Recognizing the need to learn from the best to become the best, I took the initiative to conduct a comprehensive driver experience competitive analysis to deeply understand the current landscape for drivers.

The first critical decision was selecting which companies to analyze. Including major players like DoorDash, UberEats, and Grubhub was essential. However, given that Skipcart delivers more than just restaurant orders, I decided to include Instacart and Shipt as well, due to their strong branding, high app ratings, and diverse delivery capabilities. Walmart Spark was a last-minute addition requested by leadership, which I was happy to incorporate. Determining where to begin was the next challenge. Initially, my plan focused solely on the driver apps themselves. However, I soon realized that the driver experience encompasses much more. It begins the moment drivers encounter the brand through social media, word of mouth, and other channels. Thus, it became clear that looking beyond the app was just as crucial as evaluating the app itself. This holistic approach was essential to truly understand and enhance the driver experience.

To begin the analysis, I wanted to learn more about how drivers felt about our Skipcart driver app compared to competitor driver apps. It was quite shocking comparing our low rating, 2.8 stars on the Apple Store with 210 reviews, against the others. For example, Doordash boasted a 4.7 star rating on the Apple Store with over 2.4 million reviews. Numbers don't lie and this was a great starting point to backup my findings to leadership that we needed to take serious notes as to what our competitors not only do right but wrong as well.

Continuing the analysis beyond the app itself, I gathered information on social media presence, minimum age, referral/first time bonuses, catering order opportunities, canceled order responses, and driver support options. Against these other companies, we really lacked a visible presence. We were behind on social media with two barely active accounts, and were missing a recognizable branding voice. Diving deeper into this overall experience gave insight into company appearance and the choices they made that affected the drivers overall feeling towards success and contentment. Feeling seen and heard as a driver is just as important as having an app that functions well.

Focusing on the app itself, I compared the functionality and usability of various functions across the competition to ours. This included the entire end to end experience of the driving experience from signing up, onboarding, and tutorials to choosing driving areas, scheduling hours, and order offers. I went on to look at how promos were presented, earnings were shared, and feedback was given. As I continued to look more into the apps I realized that this would be merely scratching the surface in terms of a full, comprehensive analysis into each individual feature.

My end goal of this analysis was to spark conversations about the Skipcart driver experience. Giving leadership, driver operations, product managers, developers and the rest of UX a starting point to view our experience against the leading competitors. From what I learned, Skipcart has a long way to go and the team was in unanimous agreement. This research presentation really took off and started a lot of the hard and important conversations. I was able to present my findings across teams and leadership including the VP of Skipcart, the VP of 7-11 Digital, and the Senior Product Manager of Skipcart. There is a lot we can learn from the experiences of these major names in the delivery scene. Including but absolutely not limited to, a more interactive onboarding experience, better communication about offers and earnings, and overall a more friendly app. There is so much inspiration we can take from these competitors, not only what they do right but also what they do wrong. The sooner we can understand the current space, the sooner we can create a more inclusive, delightful, and meaningful experience for drivers across the country.