An ever growing number of restaurants is adopting the online ordering system.

With the online ordering system in demand and is being acknowledged by the customers due to the tremendous success of the ‘big pizza’ chains.

The customers definitely want their orders to be placed conveniently and have their delivery on time. This has expanded the demand for food eaten off premises creating a new way of ordering and consuming food.

Research estimates the restaurant industry at nearly $500 billion a year in revenues is one of the largest in retail.

Of this, food eaten off premise carves out $210 billion, including the $30 billion delivery market, of which $11 billion is online. Exclude pizza, however, and online delivery’s slice shrinks to $4 billion. That translates to just 2% of the total addressable market.

The potential for restaurants to provide food to customers through the online ordering system is immense.

Online ordering is a valuable tool for your staff, it boosts efficiency as it reduces the time they have to spend on attending phone calls from clients by instead devoting that time to the customers present at the restaurant.

To maximise your sales by online ordering, you need to encourage customers to order online by providing them additional benefits. This process will involve a transition for many customers so you have to help them by keeping the process smooth and achievable in fewer steps.

Initially, it may be a little difficult for you to alter the customer’s preferred habits but it will definitely work if you consider the following 5 ways.

Commit to your website:

• It is one of the cheapest billboards that you enlist in your promotion campaign.
• Yes, highlight it somewhere near your brand name or logo that you “taking orders online now”.
• It would be even better if you add a separate section of online ordering to your website.
• With creative use of icons, photos, and descriptions you can gather a better conversion rate on your orders.

Use printed promotion:

• When used wisely, in-store messaging can be used in many forms.You can present this information by printing it on the receipts, take away bags, posters, and flyers.
• It is important that the information is passed to the customers effectively, so the placement of the posters should be at a place where it can attract the attention from a majority of customers.
• Try to use the internal surroundings of your restaurant to maximise this reach.As customers wait for their food, they will check out the walls, look at anything which is displayed in the restaurant.
• Use this opportunity to provide messages that encourage the customer to order online and save the time on the wait.

Receipts:

• Do not miss out on the opportunity to advertise on the receipts, they hold the customer’s attention for a brief time but a customised label at the bottom that says “you are accepting orders online and get 10% off” will capture their attention.

Use of coupons:

• Reward your customers by providing a discount when they order online.This will increase the use of online ordering.
• Promote the use of coupons by combining them with promotion from your restaurant’s social media and email-lists.

Blogging about it:

• If you have a blog, then you must be already using it to chronicle all that is happening with your restaurant.
• Blogging is a good platform to reach to your customers directly. You can use this feature to talk about your online ordering system, elaborating its features and the advantages that it will bring to the customers.

Conclusion

These are a few major tools you can use for “Getting the word out” and promoting your online ordering campaign.
People have identified considerable benefits of ordering online but there is an air of uncertainty involved due lack of convenience, lesser choice of items offered, poor condition of food due to packaging. Keeping them at bay your job as a restaurateur is that your provide your utmost attention to the menu (used for online orders) and use its uniqueness to provide a ‘food experience’ that is built upon quality.

In the end, it is nothing but your good food that keeps them coming back!