Many of us have ordered a pizza at one point or another, as pizza delivery has been around since the late 1990s in the United States. Having a piping hot meal delivered straight to your door certainly made business-savvy individuals and consumers question, “What if we could get other sorts of restaurant meals brought to our home?” And not long after, online food ordering websites became an everyday convenience.
At this point, if you operate a restaurant that doesn’t offer online ordering, you’re missing out on a huge slice of the market. 52% of American consumers claim that ordering delivery and takeout from restaurants is an “essential part of their lifestyle”—the number being even higher among Gen Zers and Millennials. (Restaurant.org)
Yet, 70% of consumers would rather order directly from a restaurant and not through a third-party service. (Hospitality Tech). In this case, you’ll not only want to offer first-party ordering but create an accessible website that delivers a flawless customer experience for all your patrons.
The nature of restaurant ownership and thin profit margins makes it challenging to embrace technology, but in this article, we’ll show you how powerful and essential a well-designed online ordering system can be.
Every top online ordering website or provider offers the following six features:
Noodles & Co. has an exemplary online ordering site and app with classic features like order scheduling and a comprehensive, categorized menu. From there, customers can click on an item to customize order details like size, protein, noodles, sauce, toppings, and meal combo options, and even add special instructions.
Every option is accompanied by a clear food image, pricing, and ordered intuitively. Once a customer is ready, they can review their cart, check out the ‘You May Also Like’ section, and even join Noodles Rewards.
Source: Noodles.com
Panera Bread is famous for its yummy café style sandwiches, soups, and salads, and makes it easy for its customers to put together their orders for delivery or pick-up. Their menu page is robust, giving customers a clear overview of their menu categories.
Click into one, and customers can directly add items to their order or customize them to a granular degree they want light, regular, or extra for a price. When finished, customers can review their order and are prompted to join MyPanera to unlock a discount.
Source: PaneraBread.com
The design of your website should reflect your brand’s identity, whether you’re a frozen yogurt brand that uses bursts of color or a higher-end seafood spot with a sleeker aesthetic. When every point of your customer journey reinforces this, it’ll create a memorable and cohesive experience.
Design elements shouldn’t just be pretty, either—everything on each page should be user-friendly and purposeful. Your interface should include bold call-to-action buttons, visual cues, and clear categories all to facilitate an easy order.
If you’re a local restaurant, you likely won’t have the leg up on exposure like chain restaurants do with advertising. That’s where restaurant SEO comes in extra handy—it works to increase the visibility of your site and ordering pages in specific organic search results. Tactics like keyword optimization, local SEO, local backlinks, and on-page SEO, among others, should be leveraged to boost your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
To complement these SEO methods, why not use the tried-and-true method of exposure that is social media? Just like if you were to promote a new dish or a seasonal promotion, use Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok to showcase your new online ordering platform. Don’t just tell potential customers it exists; create buzz around your restaurant by sharing inviting images of your dishes, behind-the-scenes reels, and making use of viral trends.
Developing and launching a secret menu is another way to combine your digital marketing and online ordering efforts. Customers often discover hidden menus through social media and word-of-mouth, reducing the amount of money you need to spend on advertising and therefore driving higher tech stack ROI.
Not only do the best online food ordering websites handle the basics exceptionally well, but they also compete with food delivery platforms like GrubHub and Uber Eats. To do so, they incorporate unique features and strategies that make it an easy decision to order directly from the restaurant themselves.
Source: Grub Street
Domino's is a franchise that does this well with its real-time order tracker and new GPS function. When customers place their order, they can find out exactly how their food is doing from prep to pick-up and even what time staff started working on their order. Once it’s picked up, they can track where their delivery driver is on a live map.
Source: Chipotle.com
Chipotle offers personalization in a highly visual and orderly fashion, letting buyers customize their meals from top to bottom. At checkout, the ‘Complete Your Meal’ section recommends three popular sides or drinks that can be added to an order in one click—boosting average order value and encouraging upsells.
With so many features out there to experiment with, restaurants should also consider adapting them to fit their unique situation. Depending on their customer base and branding, it’s all about knowing what resonates with your audience.
Start by asking what your customers value most. Is it a high level of customization? Transparency in pricing? A super-fast ordering process that gets customers from browsing the menu to paying for the order? Whatever it is, integrate features that cater to these experiences.
The top online food ordering sites certainly know how to create a one-of-a-kind customer experience. They’ve successfully meshed the factors of personalization, customizability, seamlessness, and functionality and crafted a top-of-the-line ordering system that produces the results restaurants need and customers want.
When you’ve got an online ordering system that looks and feels good to customers, they’ll feel more inclined to ditch third-party delivery marketplaces and stay loyal to your website. To stand out is to push the boundaries, and you’ll have to experiment, adapt, and analyze your business and customers to develop the perfect ordering experience.
Ready to make online ordering a mainstay in your business strategy? Get our 2024 Online Ordering Guide for Restaurants and Convenience Stores to read up on proven, growth-oriented insights.
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