Optimize Your Online Ordering Page
By: Alex Alper
Tags: Coronavirus, Delivery, Online Ordering, Covid 19, Restaurant

With the COVID-19 pandemic still ongoing with no sign of decline, online ordering is more popular than ever. Thus, your online ordering strategy needs additional attention to match the rising demand from consumers, as well as to stand out in a market where every other restaurant is currently pouring focus into their delivery services too.

Use all the tools at your disposal to help stay afloat through the uncertain future. One of the ways to do so is by optimizing your online ordering page to drive more sales.

Design an effective layout

A boring webpage won’t catch anyone’s attention and hurts your business more than it helps. Using an interesting but easy-to-navigate layout, appealing but readable fonts and colors, and an eye-catching design that captures your brand and matches your creative voice all keep customers browsing your site. When searching for a meal, customers have a lot of vendors to choose from and will quickly move on if a website is difficult to navigate or unpleasant to view.

However, figuring out the most effective layout can seem difficult if you don’t know where to start or haven’t put much thought into it before.

Layout

Your layout determines how easily customers can search your menu and find an appealing dish. Thus, layout is the most important aspect of designing your online ordering page.

Create food categories. Splitting your menu into sections improves readability; people can more easily comprehend smaller segments rather than large, unbroken text. This also makes perusing the menu simpler because they can jump to the category that they want. So while you can split the menu into breakfast, lunch and dinner, you can divide it up even further with sections like entrees, sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. depending on what your restaurant offers. Clearly mark items that cater to dietary restrictions such as vegetarianism or veganism as well as common allergies like gluten, dairy and nuts. People with special diets will often just close your menu and go somewhere with less hassle if they can’t easily find designated dishes. Additionally, they often set the standard for large groups; if one person can’t eat with you, you don’t just lose their business — you lose all their friends’, too. Use pictures. Good photography can make prospective customers crave a dish or conceptualize certain menu items that they might otherwise pass over. Use this to your advantage as a way to boost sales; showcase your best-sellers or bring attention to dishes that usually don’t get much love. Just make sure the pictures are both enticing and accurate to avoid dissatisfaction when the meal actually comes out.

Take advantage of POS technology

The most advanced POS system can monitor consumer trends, manage your inventory, track orders and do so much more. By investing in this technology, you’ll get a better idea of what items really sell and which don’t. This lets you reassess your menu on a regular basis and reorganize accordingly. You can give better page placement to dishes that don’t sell as well or simply promote the ones that do.

This technology also enables reinvention. Customer trends change with the season, literally; with advanced software, you can alter your menu to stay on top of ordering trends as they shift.

Book a demo with eatOS today to learn more about the advantages of POS technology.

Promote deals, add-ons and more

Use the information that your POS software gathers to better market your food to customers — even while they’re still shopping. You can use pop-ups to inform them about new deals, promote special offers for certain events or locations, and even suggest items that would pair well with something already in their cart. For example, someone ordering pizza might benefit from a suggestion to add garlic sauce and soda, or to upgrade the size of the pie.

You can play around with the timing of these pop-ups, for example they can automatically trigger when a certain item gets added to the cart or if these suggestions should pre-empt checkout after review. Promoting like this can boost average ticket size by as much as 30%.

Transparency matters

People like to follow the progress of their online deliveries. By improving the transparency of your service, you can improve customer satisfaction and thus foster loyalty and drive repeat sales.

Keep your menu up to date. If someone gets excited about their incoming order but then receives a call that the store actually ran out of that particular dish last week, they’ll probably go to another vendor to find that item again. Combat this by making sure you’re restocking inventory on time and marking items as sold out until you get more. Show the delivery process. Filling orders takes time, especially if you have a lot of them in queue. People can get restless when they look forward to a meal. Avoid time-wasting phone calls about particular a order’s status by integrating tracking software. Customers can see when the order gets prepared, when it goes into the oven and even where the driver is on their route.

Listen to customer feedback

By sending follow-up emails or prompting customers to review their experience at checkout, you can narrow down which aspects of your current online ordering model work well and which need readjustment. People like contributing to their community, making sure their voices get heard. Inviting feedback serves the dual purpose of improving your business and making your customers know that their opinions really matters.

You can incentivize feedback by offering discounts, coupons or prizes for those who participate.

With demand for delivery so prevalent and the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, take time to optimize your online ordering page. These tips can really make your restaurant stand out.