In a sit-down restaurant, new menu items are sold through menu inserts, easels, and as part of the introduction given by the wait staff.  In an online environment such as NetWaiter there are also a number of ways you can promote new menu items and changes.  Here are a few tips:

Maintain an Interactive Online Menu.  Nothing makes a customer twitch more than outdated information on a website.  With an easy-to-use interactive web-based menu, you can also update your menu without calling a website designer.  It’s also easy to highlight changes or new additions.

High Quality Images.  We’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth repeating.  A quality photo of a new menu item says more than any description.  Post it on your interactive menu, but also get it on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.  You want those images shared.

Include Social Media Buttons.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - all of them.  Make it easy for people to spread the word about your new menu items.  Remember that certain social media sites are favored by different age groups.  Facebook is now considered an “old folks” platform.  Younger people tend to use Instagram and Twitter.  You may want to alter your message based on the platform.

Create Buzz with “Partnerships”.  Try naming a new item after someone popular in the community.  At the very least, they will promote the item and your restaurant for you.  You’ll make this person and all their family and friends advocates for your restaurant. Imagine the buzz.

Has your restaurant ever been blindsided by an online complaint?  It doesn’t matter if it’s about your online business, or an in-restaurant experience – it’s not a good feeling.  Whether it’s legitimate, or something totally unwarranted – you need to know how to respond. 

Often it’s based on a misunderstanding or a failure to respond early, when a complaint is fresh.  A recent webinar from the National Restaurant Association had some tips on how to respond to these online complaints.

• Don’t be the last person to find out about a problem at your restaurant, or with a takeout order. Get familiar with the tools.  Use Google Alerts, monitor Yelp.  Have systems in place. 

• This isn’t personal, so don’t get defensive.  Your goal is to neutralize these incidents. 

• Take responsibility online.  Denying that it happened is usually the wrong tactic.  If it’s a completely false or bogus complaint, contact the site (i.e. Yelp) and have them remove it. 

• Get the response public and prominent.  Don’t be the 75th person to comment.  Tell the complainant that you want make it right.  Make sure everyone sees it. 

• Treat your online communication as carefully and as thoughtfully as you would in-person.  You don’t want these things going viral.

• If you are posting online, keep everything positive.  If a customer persists with negativity, take the conversation offline by suggesting they call you. 

• Train employees with your approach to handling complaints so that your staff speaks in one voice. 

• If complaints are routine or happening in patterns, it can indicate a weakness in your operation.  Use that information to your benefit and correct the issues. 

Be persistent to make things right.  People tend to remember the last thing you did for them.  It could be a big problem or small dilemma, but if you bend over backwards to make things right, that’s what they will remember most. 

In sales and marketing, the tipping point is the moment when all the market factors merge, tipping in favor of a specific product service. Sales skyrocket and no one looks back. 

Online ordering may quickly be approaching its tipping point. For restaurants that do not yet have online ordering, now is the time to get a NetWaiter site. For those restaurants who already offer NetWaiter, you’re already on the right path and riding the next big wave of change for restaurants.

Consider the market factors that have led to this tipping point…

The Consumer. Each year the percentage of consumers, aged 18 to 34, who indicate that they would order takeout or delivery on a mobile device goes up. The latest figure is 74%. Just a few years ago that number was below 50%.

The Technology. More than half of the mobile devices in use are smartphones, capable of accessing the internet and placing online orders. Public Wi-Fi is commonplace, and 3G and 4G runs things at breakneck speed. Placing orders online, not just by mobile, but tablet, laptop or desktop, is virtually flawless, and will only get better.

The Marketplace. It is estimated that the totality of mobile payments will top $720 billion/year by 2017, most of that being driven by the largest generation and demographic – the Millennials - which, not by surprise, is also the largest demographic who use online ordering.

The Capabilities. NetWaiter does much more than process online orders. The NetWaiter Management Console allows you to collect and analyze data, target customers, and send them special offers.

We saw three trends, among many, changing the restaurant industry this last year, and they can all be addressed with online ordering from NetWaiter. 

Have It Your Way — This used to be the marketing line of Burger King, but now everyone is on the customizable bandwagon.  Extra meat, extra cheese, replace the bun with a lettuce wrap. NetWaiter’s online ordering system makes it easy to allow for this type of customization.  Even when a customer has pre-paid for their online order and throws in a special request that should cost extra, NetWaiter has enabled a way for you to politely go back and charge them the additional fee (see our March newsletter, out in a few weeks).

Unconventional Hours — A substantial number of people saw their traditional jobs go away for good over the last decade.  Some estimates have as much as one-third of the workforce in “freelance” jobs.  Others are working two jobs to replace the one that went away, or commuting a considerable distance. The 9-to-5 workday has been replaced by “whenever and wherever."  Online ordering accommodates these new and unconventional work hours by making your menu always available and easily accessible.   

More Competition from Unconventional Places — Some hotels are pondering takeout parking spots for their in-house restaurant as they struggle for new ways to bring in more revenue.  Supermarkets and even big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target are offering pre-packaged meals for shoppers that are on-the-go.  To compete with these places, you need to be more convenient and innovative than they are, and never let your customers forget it.

Online ordering is one of the best tools restaurants can use to position themselves against larger chains that dominate the market.  Indeed, there might not be a better time to be an independent or small chain than right now, especially if you offer online ordering.

Yahoo Finance reports that customer traffic at large casual-dining restaurants slid 2% this past December. Reasons cited for this traffic decrease? Oversaturation, to be sure. How many large intersections in a city contain two or more casual-dining concepts?

Another is the rise of fast casual chains, the most prominent examples of which are Chipotle and Panera. Restaurants like these have seen sales increase 15% annually for the last five years. What do they offer? Made-to-order meals, made in a hurry. To sum it up in one word we all know well, they offer - convenience.

Also, a consumer trend we are seeing return is called “cocooning”, a word first coined back in 1981. Large-screen HD televisions, services such as Netflix, and the ability to buy almost anything online has resulted in more and more consumers coming home from work and never leaving the house again.

If they don’t want to go out for a meal or cook at home, their only alternative is the convenience of takeout. This is why online ordering is so helpful.  Customers crave convenience, especially takeout customers.  Offering customers the ability to order from your NetWaiter site helps them just as much as it helps your restaurant.

A recent study shows the branding advantage of a mobile site, especially for a restaurant. 

Consider these facts:

• Consumers attach to a brand faster using mobile devices than anything else, because they hold the device in their hands, as opposed looking at a computer screen or television.  They make it a part of their identity, and therefore, trust it more (the study calls it psycho-haptic — “what I touch is real”). Amazing factoid: Studies report that 65% of mobile owners admit to sleeping with their device next to their bed.

• Choices to messages on a mobile device tend to be Yes or No, and responses come fast.  This is because mobile devices are designed, in part, to make things convenient and quick.  Amazing factoid: According to a Litmus study, entitled Email Analytics, as of December 2013, 51% of emails were opened by a mobile device.

• Branded content on a mobile device is more likely to get a positive response.  This goes back to how people take personal ownership of their mobile device, which is much more than a desktop or laptop computer. 

• Want to counter a couple of bad reviews on Yelp?  Spend a little money for a great mobile site.  Consumers are more likely to change their perception of a brand if the message or experience comes via a mobile device.  Remember, their device is their personal property.  They are emotionally attached to it.  It wouldn’t lie to them.

It’s accepted industry wisdom that a good contributor to building business at a restaurant is new-product introductions.  Those new dishes bring back customers, goes the logic.

If this is true, why does NetWaiter remind online customers what they last ordered when they visit your online ordering site?  

Because what we’ve long suspected turns out to be right… according to a recent industry study, less than 30% of diners are inclined to try new menu items or limited time offers (LTOs).  The other 70% stick with what is tried and true. 

The study also shows that for those culinary adventurers, there is a preference for permanent new-menu items over LTOs, by about 56%. 

There is also a distinct difference between the types of restaurants where customers are more likely to expand their menu selections.  The Casual-Dining segment is most likely to draw in customers who want to get adventurous and order something new for the first time.  40% of those customers may try a new or unfamiliar item.  Compared to only 19% for QSRs and 12% for Fast Casual restaurants, Casual-Dining is relatively high, but the overall incidences of people ordering something new are low.

For takeout and delivery, customers use Online Ordering for its tremendous convenience, and being reminded of what they last ordered, only helps increase that convenience.

The statistics are stunning: 95% of smartphone users conduct restaurant searches, and 64% of those searches convert to purchases within one hour.  Knowing this, it’s important to understand that mobile websites come with their own specific set of challenges.  Here’s what to keep in mind:

Keep it quick. Think about your own experiences.  When you’re using your smartphone to look up information, you could be in your car, walking in or out of an appointment, or traveling.  Time is a premium.  Your mobile site should include the important things within one click (i.e. a link to your online menu and online ordering).  Quick access is important.

Highlight your menu.  Sixty percent of consumers say a menu is the most important factor in selecting a restaurant online.  Keep that menu updated, too.  No one likes bad information, especially when it’s directly from the source.

Keep your brand prominent.  Who you are is important.  Make sure your logo and colors are reflected on the first page and all other pages of your mobile site.

Choose the right mobile partner.  At NetWaiter, we quickly saw the potential of online ordering from smartphones.  That’s why every NetWaiter client gets a custom mobile website for online ordering, branded to their restaurant.  Furthermore, we make it easy to update your mobile menu and settings through the NetWaiter Management Console. 

When NetWaiter brings you a new online ordering customer, our statistics show the likelihood is that they will return to place their second order within 14 days.  This is important.  New customers, and specifically ones that come back again and again, are one of the principal engines of growth.

It is safe to say that the convenience of online ordering is what draws them in, and is part of what keeps them coming back. What can you do to make sure your online ordering process is as convenient as possible, so they keep coming back to your restaurant?  Here are some quick tips:

Make the pickup process smooth and easy.  If you can, have a separate area for pickup orders, preferred parking, and your most personable employee working the counter.  These are all things we’ve talked about before, but are worth repeating.

Take advantage of NetWaiter’s pre-payment capabilities.  While one industry study indicated that less than 19% of online customers pre-pay for orders, that number is significantly higher with NetWaiter.  When given the option, 68% of all NetWaiter customers choose to pre-pay online.  The figure jumps to 77% when looking at just delivery orders.  Be sure to enable online payments and receive funds directly to your merchant account.