Rating your food should take ten seconds

A star rating looks like the smallest feature in a food app. It is also one of the most important. When you choose between two biryani places you have never tried, the stars and a few honest words from other people are most of what you have to go on. And for the kitchens, a rating is often the only feedback they get from anyone who did not call to complain.

The problem is that very few people rate their orders. Not because they do not care, but because by the time the food arrives, the app is the last thing on their mind. And when they do open the rating screen, it asks for too much.

Ask at the right moment#

The best moment to ask is not while the food is still hot. It is the next time you open Laayo after a delivery. You have eaten, you have an opinion, and you are already holding the app.

So that is when we ask. The next time you open the app after an order is delivered, a sheet slides up: Rate your food. It shows the restaurant’s logo, the date and the amount, so you know straight away which order it is about.

We set firm rules about when this sheet is allowed to appear, because nothing is more annoying than a rating popup that will not take no for an answer:

• It only asks about an order delivered in the last seven days.
• It asks about one order at a time, the most recent one you have not rated.
• It gives up after three tries. If you skip it, it stays skipped.
• It never appears on top of another sheet, a dialog or a screen you are in the middle of. It waits for you to be on the home screen.
• If you have already reported a problem with that order, it does not ask you to rate it. You have told us enough.

Stars, a few taps, done#

The sheet is built so that one tap is a complete rating:

1. Tap the stars. That alone is enough.
2. Tap a reason or two, if you like. The choices match the stars you picked: good things for four or five stars, like Tasted good or Well packed, and problems for one to three, like Arrived cold or Small portion. Reasons are a fixed list on purpose: a restaurant can act on “twelve people said it arrived cold” in a way it cannot act on forty different sentences.
3. Write a line, if you want. The comment box is one line that grows as you type, not a big empty box that makes you feel you owe us an essay.

If the order came with one of our riders, a second short step asks about the delivery. Then the sheet says thanks and closes itself.

If you give one or two stars, a small link appears: Something went wrong? Report an issue. A low rating often means something we should fix for you, not just record. The link takes you straight to the order report, where our support team can actually help.

There is always a Skip at the top. Nobody should have to rate a meal to get back to their app.

Where your rating goes#

Your rating does not live in a separate box that only we read. It is written into the same reviews that restaurants and other customers already see. The store’s stars update, the dish ratings update, and your order history shows the rating you gave.

The restaurant gets one notification per rated order, not one for every dish in it. A kitchen with a big lunch rush does not need their phone buzzing six times for one customer.

One sheet, everywhere#

Until now, there were several ways to rate an order, and they did not look alike: the prompt, a button on the order page, a link in your order list, and the link in the notification. Each one was a little different.

In the next update, all of them open the same sheet. You can rate each dish on its own, tell us how the packaging held up, and submit once. If your connection drops halfway, the parts that already went through are remembered, so pressing Submit again does not send your review twice.

On the order page, a delivered order shows Rate your order with five empty stars. Once you have rated it, the card shows Your rating for the restaurant, with your stars filled in, so you can see what you said.

What we chose not to do#

• No rating walls. We never block reordering, tracking or anything else behind a rating.
• No reminders by notification. The prompt appears in the app, at most three times, and that is it.
• No tip request inside the rating. Tipping your rider has its own place on the tracking screen. Mixing money into a feedback form makes both worse.
• No photos in the quick sheet, for now. Photos make reviews richer but slow the sheet down. We kept the fast path fast.

What’s next#

The single rating sheet is rolling out in the next app update. If a restaurant you love has few ratings, the kindest thing you can do for them takes about ten seconds.