Dominos Talks Xbox App and the Second Screen Opportunity

OrderTracker_DeliveredDomino’s Pizza UK has launched the first retail app on Microsofts Xbox One games console.

Using the app, developed by Future Platforms, Xbox users will be able to order pizza directly while playing games or watching movies. Once theyve made their order, the app tracks the delivery and displays real-time updates at the side of the screen.

We spoke to Paul Francis, head of eCommerce at Dominos, about the app:

How did this Xbox app come about?

Two and a half years ago, we started a conversation with Microsoft about getting a presence on the Xbox, but it proved difficult to move that forward. It would have required a large investment of money on our part to get onto the Xbox 360 platform, and it just wasnt as flexible as the Xbox One is today.

So instead we started with a Windows Phone 7 app, then WP8 and finally a universal Windows 8.1 app. We knew the Xbox One was coming, so the idea was to build something we could port over directly. We managed to port our Windows 8.1 app across to Xbox One in a couple of months.

Why Xbox?

Our target audience is a really good fit for the Xbox One – typically, gamers and pizza eaters are the same people. The Xbox One was marketed as an all-round entertainment platform for your living room and, unlike previous generations of games consoles, its capable of multi-tasking.

Thats significant for us because it means we can stay front and centre. Users can pause their game or film, make an order, then go back to what they were doing, while the pizza tracker stays at the side of the screen to let them know the deliverys on its way.

Is there any mobile element to this app?

We built Microsoft SmartGlass capability into our mobile ordering app, so that when you get to the point in the Xbox app where you need to enter personal details, you can do it on the phone rather than the big screen. The idea is to give people more than on reason to engage with the Dominos app on their phone.

SmartGlass can actually support up to 32 independent devices, so we want to take that to the next step with collaborative ordering. When youre sitting around playing games with a few friends, the idea is people can configure their own order on their phone and then aggregate them together into one central order on the Xbox.

If we can distribute the ordering experience across different devices, I think thats much more of a natural experience.

Are there any other ways of bringing your brand to Xbox that youre exploring?

With the Xbox One, you can have achievements so that, if you achieve a certain thing, unlocks a piece of content. There are certainly ways you could tie that to discounts, gamify the experience a little bit and give someone a reason to order from us.

Weve also got a social marketing program called #Gamefuel which we use for speaking to the game community, especially around major launches. So well have representatives playing the latest Call of Duty, for example, and if you beat us, well give you a reward.

There are a lot of new opportunities to use the games console as a media channel just as much as a way of directly selling our pizzas.