How to Increase Restaurant Delivery Sales with Online Ordering

Online ordering is a fast and convenient way for customers to quickly get the food they want from their favourite restaurants. It’s fantastic both for people who are in a hurry and don’t want to have a lengthy phone conversation and for those who wish to pick their meals out at their leisure.

It’s also a lot easier for people who may be neurodivergent or simply introverted and find phone conversations exhausting. And when it’s set up properly, online ordering can make the order and delivery process a lot simpler for restaurants. All in all, setting up a takeaway system with online ordering is a great way to boost the delivery aspect of your restaurant business.

Here, we’ll take you through some of the best ways to optimise your online ordering and get the best possible results for your business and customers.

How to increase restaurant delivery sales with online ordering

Let’s take a look at how you can boost delivery sales with online ordering for your restaurant:

Create a user-friendly website and web app

When we think about how to increase return delivery sales, the first thing that should come to mind is the user experience.

If you give your customers a quick, efficient, and pleasant online ordering experience, they will return again and again. But a clunky, laborious online ordering process will drive customers away, no matter how delicious your food is.

It would be best if you aimed to have an online ordering solution designed with the customer’s needs in mind. It's also necessary to have both a user-friendly website and a mobile app because clients might want to use it on their phones or computers.

Use clear and attractive visuals

Good visuals don’t just make your site look pretty. They also improve the customer experience and make your brand look a lot more professional.

Ideally, the look of your site/app should be:

• Clean. Too ‘busy’ an appearance can make your site confusing to use
• Clear. Customers should be able to find what they want quickly and with ease
• Attractive. For example, if putting up photos of available dishes, make sure that your food is looking at its most delicious!

If possible, use photos of your actual business, food, and employees rather than stock photos from the likes of Picsabay. Hire a professional photographer if you need to. It’s worth a bit of extra expense to make your business and its food look good. Need help with your content? Get in touch with our team today.

Streamline the ordering process

One of the difficulties of maintaining an effective online ordering system is making sure that you have everything you need to fulfil both your online and normal restaurant orders. From a customer’s perspective, there’s nothing worse than ordering food to then find out that it’s out of stock.

A slick, streamlined ordering process is key to boosting sales and making sure you have everything ready to keep up with the new demand. For example, you could:

• Have automated inventory management so that customers can only order what’s currently available.
• Keep staff informed of all developments in real-time, perhaps via an app or in-restaurant update screens.
• Make sure that every order gets sent straight to the right food prep station.

One excellent way to streamline your ordering process is to add automated solutions via SaaS platforms. This can often remove the possibility of human error and remove the need for more tedious checking processes.

For example, order management software by storekit can streamline your order accuracy and efficiency through features such as real-time inventory tracking, automated order processing, a well-organised customer database, and insightful reporting and analytics.

Leverage social media for marketing and promotions

Social media has revolutionised the way we do business. You can leverage it to bring customers flocking to your online ordering service.

When launching marketing campaigns or devising promotions, be sure to bring them to social media. All the big social media platforms have sophisticated advertising facilities which will help you to get your material to precisely targeted audiences.

You can also sell via social media by enabling social commerce. This allows customers to order directly from your social media without having to click on your website.

Partner up with other food delivery platforms

Partnering with different food delivery platforms can greatly impact your delivery operation. Platforms like these can massively expand your delivery capacity by providing independent couriers to deliver your food.

This saves you money, as you don’t have to hire your own delivery people. It can also be very convenient for your customers, as it gives them extra options for ordering.

Research which delivery platforms work best for your area and which will work best for your brand before partnering with any platform. You can then use accounts payable systems to automate the payment process as well as monitor whether using a platform continues to save you money or if it’s time to invest in your own operation.

Ensure timely and reliable delivery

People order food to be delivered because it’s convenient. That convenience vanishes if the food is delayed or your delivery process is unreliable.

So, prioritise speed and reliability when it comes to delivery. Make sure that your order system is fast and efficient so you can prepare and send out food as quickly as possible. Hire delivery staff who know your delivery area well to avoid delays.

Provide outstanding customer service

Your great food may be what gets customers to you in the first place, but it’s your customer service that will keep them coming back. Make sure that your customer service is outstanding.

For example, you could:

• Be honest and transparent in every customer communication
• Keep customers up to speed with the status of their order
• Go above and beyond to make sure that the customer enjoys their food
• Keep a record of regular customers and their preferences
• Apologise if mistakes are made
• Focus on customer satisfaction

Personalise the customer experience

Personalisation makes the customer feel seen, understood, and cared for. So, personalise your customer experience as much as you can.

For example:

• Log customer preferences and give customers the option to quickly reorder their favourites
• Greet the customer by name
• Offer the customer discounts on their favourites
• Remember special dates such as the customer’s birthday, and send them vouchers, discounts, etc, on those days
• Notify the customer of new dishes they might like, or upcoming promotions on their favourites

Boost your restaurant delivery sales by optimising online ordering

Online ordering is convenient for your customers and great for your business, but only some know how to increase restaurant delivery sales through it. But now, following the advice in this guide, you can optimise your online ordering process and positively impact your restaurant delivery sales.

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