Top 10 Features Your Restaurant Online Order Solution Must Have

Is your restaurant still looking for an online ordering system? Or perhaps your business is relying on a delivery service provider solution for your online ordering. A mobile-friendly restaurant order solution must do more than just collect the customer's order.

Here is a list of 10 must-have features your restaurant online order system must have:

  1. Couponing
  2. Cross-Selling (UpSelling)
  3. Marketing Tracking
  4. Custom Fields
  5. Reports
  6. Scheduling
  7. CRM - Customer Relationship Management
  8. POS Integration
  9. Fraud prevention
  10. Delivery Service Integration

Let’s take a closer at each restaurant food ordering system feature.

Couponing The ability to market coupon codes to the consumer market provides your restaurant with options to compete against competitors, entice new customers and reward existing customers. Your online food order solution must be able to allow customers to apply coupon codes during checkout.

Cross Selling A well-trained restaurant team member knows how to upsell or make recommendations regarding products that compliment an ordered menu item. Your online menu must be able to prompt customers to look at recommended menu items that may good well with their ordered items.

Marketing Tracking Your online menu (website or in App) will more than likely receive more traffic (lookie-loos) than orders. Your descriptions and photos of your dishes will help persuade visitors. When this is not enough your tracking and retargeting consumers through tracking pixels will make up for the shortfall. Your online ordering system must support tracking pixels from Google Analytics, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and SnapChat.

Custom Fields The more information you can collect about your consumers the better you will be able to serve them. Your online food order solution must be able to provide the ability to support custom input fields.

Reports Your accountant, kitchen staff and even your digital marketing support team will love you when you provide them with reports that make their jobs easier. Look at the reporting features of your online food ordering solution. Reports such as prepping, kitchen details, inventory or customer list.

Scheduling Several restaurants have lunch and dinner menus. Others have specials that run from time to time. Your online food ordering solution must support scheduling options that allow for a wide array of combinations.

Customer Relationship Management Customer relationship management is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention. Your online food ordering solution must have a built-in customer database system and/or integrate with other CRM solutions like Zoho or SalesForce.

POS Integration Most restaurants prefer not to introduce a secondary process into the mix. Several of the delivery ordering providers realize this. As a result, many are trying tablet solutions, faxing, and cloud printing. The best straight forward approach is integration with your restaurants POS system. Your online ordering solution must integrate into your current workflow preferably with your restaurant POS system.

Fraud Prevention Everyone is concerned about fraud. Chargebacks are frustration. Your online ordering system must have a solution to reduce credit card fraud by blocking cards, phone numbers, and devices that are suspect or have been flagged for fraudulent or suspicious activity.

Delivery Service integration Your restaurant can acquire new customers, increase the lifetime value of existing customers and reach untapped markets with delivery. Delivery Service Providers are charging as much as 30% commission fees. Your online ordering system must be able to integrate with a delivery provider such as PostMates to leverage flexible and affordable delivery options.

Conclusion Online food ordering is becoming a feature restaurant-goers expect their favorite restaurants to have. The features outlined in this article are “must-haves” for any restaurant considering online ordering or already spoon-deep into the process. Let’s talk more about your restaurant’s online ordering strategy.