10 Tips for Choosing an Online Ordering System for Your Restaurant

The online food ordering system needs to be made much more accurate and efficient looking at the consumer demands and the competition.

As per the survey– by 2016, 30 thousand restaurants subscribed to an online food delivery brand, Eat24 by Yelp.

Also, when asked to respondents in a survey, 10% of them said they use food delivery services once per week.

The food delivery has increased because online food ordering is growing at the highest speed.

To take the maximum benefit, restaurant owners like you need to take benefit of the online ordering system. It helps in-

• Increasing more loyal customers
• Increasing repeat orders
• Improving reputation
• Strengthening customer experience
• Boosting sales

But, you can only fructify these benefits if you choose the right online ordering app. So, here are the top 10 tips to consider while choosing an online food ordering system for your restaurant.

1. Easy & Quick Customization

Each restaurant is different and serves differently. Also, each restaurant has different colors, themes, images, and font style that matches with their restaurant and even with their website.

So, the first and the foremost tip while choosing an online ordering system for your restaurant is to check whether the system has the ability to allow you to customize the entire system as per your requirements.

This helps your ordering system to stay in sync with your restaurant and it becomes easy for you to manage it effectively to make it a successful investment for your restaurant.

2. Appealing User Interface (UI)

The attractive user interface (UI) is the most important aspect to attract your customers to make a purchase.

Being a restaurant owner, you might have experienced that with an attractive website, you can get more orders.

In the same way, an online ordering system with an appealing UI attracts your customers to browse through your app and order there.

Even, this increases the ratio of repeat customers resulting in an improved ROI of your online ordering app.

So, another tip is to always look for attractive UI of the online ordering app before finalizing it for your restaurant.

3. User-friendly System

Excellent customer experience makes any business a hit. And, an online ordering system is an investment to offer great customer experience and improve sales for your restaurant.

So, the online ordering app is the place where your restaurant customers are going to place food orders. And, the more simplification and ease of the processes the system has, the more customers you have.

Whether your customers can place food orders on any platform, any device? User-friendliness also involves that your customers should have the ease to place the order from the website and even from their iOS or Android mobile.

Your food ordering system needs to be user-friendly in managing, placing, and tracking the online food orders.
Hence, ensure to look for the user-friendliness in the online food ordering system before selecting it.

4. Delivery Options

Did you know?

61% of U.S. respondents in a survey said they are likely to get delivery from a full-service restaurant directly to their home or office.

This means delivery is more acceptable and in demand of the restaurant customers. So, before moving on to select an online food ordering system, you should check whether the app is offering your customers a delivery option or not.

5. Pickup Facilities

Recently, we saw McDonald’s introducing the new “Click & Collect” feature on their apps. It is said that this feature allows your restaurant customers to place an order and collect it as per their convenience.

Such features or other kinds of pickup features help your restaurant customers to have your restaurant as their most favorite one. This gives them the freedom to choose your restaurant over others.

Count this tip equally important before choosing an online food ordering system.

6. Efficient Menu Setup & Installation

No restaurant owners are technical PROs. So, understanding and learning how to manage and operate the online food ordering system should be quite easy and quick.

Setting up the menu efficiently, easily, and quickly is what each restaurant owner looks for. This saves their time and allows them to get started with getting more business.

So, here is your another tip to look for quick and efficient menu setup and installation processes that help you improve your sales in no time.

7. Cost that Fits Your Budget

The only user interface, user-friendliness, and user experience are not enough to choose the online food ordering system.

Being a restaurant owner, you also need to stay in sync with your budget. With all the features and functionalities that the app offers, need to be matched with your budget as it should not go overboard. This is not the only cost attached to improve sales. Also, you need to measure the ROI expected out of the system before integrating it with your restaurant.

So, another tip to keep in mind is the cost attached to the ordering system before finalizing it.

8. Marketing Support

Online food ordering system is an important aspect of your restaurant as it is going to improve your sales.

But, just getting this system in place won’t help. You would need to promote it extensively to share this news with your restaurant customers.

Before choosing the online food ordering system, you need to ask the developer or the provider on how shall they support on the marketing front.

Also, you need to check this out with them that do they have any shout-out policies that help you spread the word to the world about your brand new online food ordering system.

Marketing support can be an addition to what features your online ordering app shall have. You can look this as an option, but this is not a mandatory thing.

9. Support & Maintenance Services

The most important challenge for the restaurant owners is to keep your system updated with the latest technology trends and upgradations.

You aren’t being a technology master, you need to have an online ordering app from a provider that offers support and maintenance services.

This is technology and it is bound to get errors. So, there can be any issues such as the system with some integration errors, the orders are not being placed or tracked appropriately, missing out some information, technical server errors and much more.

Looking at any such errors, you can get panicked because it hinders the order placements which is directly proportional to affect sales.

Even, the technology keeps on changing and so are the customer needs. You would need to upgrade your system from time to time as per the customer needs to offer the highest customer satisfaction.

For any such things, your app provider needs to have annual support and maintenance services that you can avail to keep your system up-to-date and error-free.

So, look for this option before choosing the online food ordering system for your restaurant.

10. Reporting Feature

Business owners are not able to track how many orders they receive on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

An online food ordering app with a reporting feature helps the restaurant owners to understand how many orders do they receive on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, even on weekdays and on weekends, on public holidays or on normal days.

The reporting feature of the online food ordering app show you a dashboard of your total orders, deliveries, takeaways, etc. with an excellent UI and simple language.

This makes it easy for the restaurant owners measure their success at a certain period of time. You can analyze your restaurant stats and measure the ROI of your restaurant and you can plan the next marketing plan to improve the sales.

Hence, here is your last tip to check out the reporting feature of the online food ordering system for your restaurant to make it a healthier investment for your business.

Remember These Top Tips

For a restaurant owner, it is a crucial decision to choose the right online ordering system. Because, the marketing and sales, both are dependent on it. And, looking at the pace, the online ordering is increasing, there is a lot to come in the restaurant industry. Remember all these tips to make sure you choose the best online food ordering app for your restaurant.