Restaurants that link an online ordering portal to their website are turning business away and paying to do so.

If you have an online ordering link to a portal showing on your restaurant’s website, you are sending customers from your site, where they are completely focused on you, to a place where they can order from a variety of restaurants.  You are essentially inviting them to order from one of your competitors.

Within the overall marketing strategy of your restaurant, the purpose of a portal is to bring you new customers, not the other way around.  When you point customers to a portal to place an order at your restaurant, you pay extraordinary fees for that business.  If you’re sending repeat customers to place orders through the portal, it’s even worse.

The average portal fee at Grubhub/Seamless is about 14% of each order.  With your own, individually-branded online ordering site, like NetWaiter, you would pay a small fraction of those fees.

Customers come to your website because they are interested in your restaurant.  Don’t send them to a portal where you will either lose them to a competitor, or pay the portal’s huge fee.  Keep them on your site, accept their order directly, retain all of the customer information, and save money while doing so.

Ask any independent restaurateur what brings in the most new customers and they will likely tell you word-of-mouth.  People telling other people about your restaurant, by most estimates, brings in seven to eight out of every ten customers.

What they don’t say, because many haven’t thought about it, is that word-of-mouth conversations don’t just start out of thin air.  They happen because of the things you do to wow customers and catch their attention.  You have to give them something to talk about.  Here are a few examples:

Special Events – We know a Spanish restaurant that regularly holds special events focusing on specific aspects of their cuisine – tamale making, menudo sampling, etc.  The events normally have a nominal charge.  For instance, their tequila tastings are $30/person and they are regularly sold out.  The word-of-mouth these events create is priceless.

Team Sponsorships – Is sponsoring a local Little League team worth it?  You only reach maybe a dozen or so families?  Think again.  You’re reaching many more when you consider the larger organization includes hundreds of kids and their families – all in your area.

Outstanding Online Ordering – Yep, that’s another word-of-mouth builder.  With NetWaiter, the simple act of using Facebook when ordering online can help generate word-of-mouth activity for your restaurant.  After logging in with their Facebook account on NetWaiter, the customer’s friends are automatically notified (with permission) that they just ordered from your restaurant.  The average number of friends someone has on Facebook is now 338.  If only 10 people used Facebook to login, an additional 3,380 people could potentially learn about your restaurant (and even click to place an order for themselves).

Word-of-mouth is not a random thing that happens.  What are you doing at your restaurant to spark a conversation?

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. 

 

Remember the 2013 Super Bowl and the 34-minute power failure? It has a special place in football history. 

It was also a legendary moment in marketing. Somewhere in those thirty-four minutes, the marketing guru’s for Oreo tweeted a simple graphic—a photo of an Oreo cookie on a semi-darkened screen and the words “You can still dunk in the dark.”

It’s called moment marketing – marketing that takes advantage of unique circumstances. What if your restaurant, during that power failure, had tweeted, “You can still order online in the dark, and we deliver in case the lights come back on.” It would likely bring your NetWaiter online ordering site some action. 

But how can you prepare for moment marketing?  Here are some tips:

Have a plan. We just concluded the Olympics, a true global event. Imagine sending your customers a message in Facebook or Twitter—“Need a pizza to get you through the lady’s figure skating finals?” or, “How about celebrating the U.S. sinking the Russian hockey team with one of our submarine sandwiches?” If you prepare for an event, when the unexpected happens, you’re that much closer to being ready to pounce. 

Choose the best channel. Email might not be the best vehicle to reach folks during a weekend event. It is primarily a business tool, and after hours and outside of work, people are not as tuned into it. Facebook or Twitter are more appropriate. In the middle of a weekday, though, email might well be the best way to reach someone. 

Be authentic. Be part of what’s happening. If you can make people laugh with the cleverness of your promotion, you are apt to be more successful. Oreo didn’t send out an ad for their cookies. They suggested that their cookies would be appropriate for the moment, and they did it in a humorous way.

 

January 1 is rapidly approaching. There is no better time to go over a list of things that will help you maximize the benefit of your NetWaiter online ordering system. 

1. One Click Access from your Homepage.  Attention spans on websites are measured in nanoseconds.  Don’t make your customer look – have at least one link clearly visible, at the top of your homepage.  Have at least one more button, shown consistently in the same place, on every page of your website.

2. Don’t Post a Link to Any Portal Listing.  Portals bring in the occasional new customer who might not have found your restaurant otherwise.  The costs, however, can be up to four times, or more, than NetWaiter.  Let portals send you new customers, not the other way around.  Remember, almost half of customers visiting a portal site (47.1%) said they clicked over to the restaurant’s own website to order their food once they found a restaurant they liked.  Capturing those customers is critical to save money.

3. Menu Priority.  Your online menu needs to be well crafted, just like your table menu.  The most profitable dishes, or those most popular with your customers, should have prominent positioning towards the top of each category.

4. Updated Menus.  Keep your online menu updated.  It only takes a second through your NetWaiter Management Console.  This is a big one: 68% of people are not likely to visit a restaurant, café, or bar after encountering incorrect online information about the business.

5. Don’t Forget About… Appetizers, desserts, and drinks are categories most frequently overlooked in takeout orders.  Make sure the hierarchy of your up-selling categories gives preference to these types of items. 

6. Market, Market, Market.  Use the database from your NetWaiter Management Console to promote off-hours business, special offers, and other incentives to make sure your favorite customers are well informed and come back often.

7. Seeing is Believing.  Photos sell product.  Are you making maximum use of photos on your NetWaiter site?  Click here for some tips and to learn more about the impact of photos with online ordering. 

8. Encourage New Customers.  Do you have an incentive for a first-time online customer?  The long-term value of an online customer is huge (considerably more than a phone-in customer), and the best part is – you can track it.  Consider offering an ongoing discount for first-time online customers (maybe 15% off, or more).

9. Take Advantage of Online Payments.  68% of customers pay online with NetWaiter, and the figure is even higher for delivery orders.  This saves time for both you and your customers.  In addition, the funds are deposited directly into your bank account. 

 

A recent industry white paper cites ten percent of online purchases come from a smartphone or tablet computer.  The same source predicts that by 2017, that percentage will be up to 50 percent.

There is no doubt that online and mobile commerce is getting more pervasive.

Some may refer to this as the beginning of Web 3.0, the convergence of social and commercial media, or what is becoming known as social commerce, wherein smart marketers use the power of social media to drive word-of-mouth information and then offer customers a way to make an immediate purchase.

As we look towards the future, we see social commerce as a turning point for online businesses.  It gives users the power to make direct purchases of products recommended by friends.  Their credit card, address and personal information may even be eventually synced with their social media accounts.  The act of making purchases will be easier.

NetWaiter has provided restaurants an early avenue into social commerce for several years in the form of our Facebook integration.  When a customer places an online order through NetWaiter, they have the opportunity to use their Facebook account to login, which also provides the option to post a message about their order to their Facebook page.  Not only does the post give restaurants immediate promotion, but there is also a link back to the restaurant’s NetWaiter site for others to view the menu and place their own orders.

The truth is - customers have always had the power of word-of-mouth advertising.  For the most part, it was simply passed on in personal conversations.  Because much more is on the web now, word-of-mouth advertising provides restaurant owners significantly more leverage and the ability to capture additional sales.

Customers resort to online searches, especially through their smartphones, to find restaurant information more and more these days.  Bad online information, however, can hurt you.  A recent industry study revealed that 68% of people are not likely to visit a restaurant, café, or bar after encountering incorrect online information about the business.

Here are a few tips about managing your restaurant’s online presence:

Know Where You Are Listed - The numerous online outlets—Yelp, Foursquare and others—enable customers to identify, rate, and comment on the restaurants they patronize.  Be sure to regularly search for your restaurant online.  If you find a place where you are not listed, check into what it takes to get listed.  More importantly, if you see incorrect information, have it fixed ASAP.

Know What Counts - The aforementioned study also said that 60% of consumers say the menu is the most important factor in selecting a restaurant online.  For all of your online listings, you can link customers to your custom NetWaiter menu.  It will be available to consumers online and via mobile.  Photos are good, too – a few pictures of your restaurant (inside and out) are helpful selling tools.

Keep Online Information Updated - Remember, nobody likes a restaurant with bad or outdated online information.  Check and update your information regularly.  And most importantly:

Make sure your restaurant’s online ordering capabilities via NetWaiter are prominent - The quicker you can get customers to your online ordering site and placing their order, the better your bottom line will be. 

 

The studies and research all agree.  The biggest attraction for ordering online is customer convenience and control.  Whenever we make changes and upgrades to the NetWaiter system, we always put them through our ‘convenience filter’.  Above and beyond our recent Group Ordering release, other upgrades have been made to improve convenience for customers.  Here’s a recap:

 

Group Ordering

As discussed in our last newsletter, group ordering allows any customer, but particularly people like administrative assistants, pharmaceutical reps, or anyone organizing a group lunch/dinner, to conveniently place orders for everyone involved.

To start, an organizer invites friends or co-workers via email.  Your NetWaiter site allows the organizer to select invitees and include an optional message.  Each person accepts or declines the invitation.  If they join the group, they are directed to your menu to select their items.  When completed, their selections are sent to the organizer, who submits the Group Order, with the desired pickup/delivery time.  Each item of a Group Order is identified with the person’s name that ordered it.  If possible, your restaurant should write the name of the corresponding person on each item before packaging up the entire order.

 

Other Front-End Changes

Editing Orders – Customers will discover they now have a faster and easier way to edit and delete order information, if needed.

Site Appearance – We’ve tweaked a couple of visual elements (fonts, etc.) to improve consistency throughout the ordering process.

Site Layout – We’ve increased customer usability of the NetWaiter website.  Additions include a ‘breadcrumb’ to help with navigation, easier access to Log In/Off, and a link to view the status of a pending Group Order.

 

Management Console Changes 

Email Marketing and Social Widget Upgrades – You now have more options for editing content of email messages and those on your social widget.

Promotions Upgrade – When offering promotions that include specific items, NetWaiter will automatically add those items to an order when the customer enters the Promo code.