Smooth Sailing with Online Food Orders: Top Challenges and Easy Fixes
Customers Face Challenges Navigating Your Digital Food Ordering Platform
If your digestive system for online food orders leaves something to be desired, let's explore solutions. In this guide, we'll tackle the common issues frustrating customers when online ordering and provide pain-free measures to create a stellar ordering experience.
Got the Right Recipe with Orderable
Orderable, a user-friendly WordPress plugin, fills your kitchen with online ordering capabilities, making it a breeze to manage your dishes and orders with ease. It's a versatile recipe for independent restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and takeout joints, empowering you to control your delivery services better than third-party apps like Uber Eats.
What's on the Menu?
An online ordering system is a feast for customers, allowing them to savor their meals without the need to call or visit in person. Here's the channels serving the appetizing main course:
- Customers visit your restaurant's website to start the mouth-watering journey.
- They browse through juicy menu options, customize their orders, and add items to the cart.
- During checkout, customers review their meal plan, like any special preferences or dietary restrictions.
- They make their payment using their favorite method.
- You send them a confirmation notification, and your meal is on the way.
Some dishes also service in-house diners who can order directly from their tables via quick response (QR) codes.
Why a Tasty Virtual Menu Matters
Dining should be easy and quick, giving customers no reason to throw in the towel. A well-optimized system enhances your customers' experience, helping you reel in repeat business. The numbers prove it: businesses improving customer experience witness a 42% improvement in retention, 33% increase in satisfaction, and a 32% boost in cross-selling and up-selling.
Bringing Home the (Order) Bacon with Orderable
Orderable puts the gourmet menu on your WordPress site, enabling customers to make reservations without any middleman hassle. Eager to know the dessert that seals the deal? Let's take a closer peek:
Charmed Customers
Orderable is as agile on mobile devices as a kitten in a playground. It enables easy browsing, allowing customers to take a bite out of your savory menu options without any friction. Customers can check prices, read mouth-watering descriptions, customize the menu to their liking, and add those delightful dishes to the cart.
The swift checkout process then enables customers to specify their pick-up or delivery time, fill in the necessary information, review the juicy details, leave any special instructions, and pay securely.
Your hungry audience will also receive a notification confirming their order, ensuring a smoother, more satisfying meal time.
- Use attractive labels to denote promotional deals, allergens, and specific dietary needs for easier menu navigation.
- Share links to allergen details and nutritional information in menu descriptions for health-conscious diners.
Cooks Delight
The moment a customer places an order, your chopping blocks learn that it's game on. You can quickly verify the information provided by the customer, view exact order details on a live dashboard, and set your kitchen into action.
Order Management Made Easy
Choose the days of the week you're open for deliveries, deciding when you can win their hearts with your tantalizing dishes. You can even control the influx of orders during peak hours by deciding the number of orders accepted within a given timeframe. Manage your savory order flow like a pro.
Orderable works side by side with WooCommerce, offering secure payment options and processing each transaction securely. No need to worry about sneaky commission fees, since Orderable is 100% commission-free!
Finding the Bone in Your Online Ordering System
Before you can alleviate your online ordering system's struggles, it's crucial to pinpoint the issues causing your customers' discomfort. Every kitchen operates differently, so your challenges will vary. Let's get down to the specifics:
Tasting the Dish
Start by experiencing your meal as a customer would by going through the entire process. Does the "Order Now" button work flawlessly? Is the website quick and responsive on all mobile devices? Ensure that your sommelier is not a party pooper!
Get the Feedback
Enter the world of the customer by asking them directly about their ordering experience. Speak with both dine-in customers who place orders from their tables and diners who pick up their orders. Reading online reviews and comments can also reveal common issues.
System Analytics
Crunch the data to find where your customers drop their orders. In the right combination, you'll spot the challenges plaguing your system.
Gradual Gastronomic Improvements
Fix the problems one bite at a time instead of trying to overhaul everything all at once. Some issues, like a broken checkout button, require immediate attention. However, transforming your menu layout will take a bit more time and testing.
Next, let's tackle the most common hurdles customers face when dealing with online ordering systems:
Common Courses of Action
- The website is too slow or unresponsive
- The menu is a tangled mess
- The checkout process is onerous
- Customers can't schedule orders for later
- Fewer payment options
- No order tracking or confirmation
- No clear customer support options
1. Mouth-Watering Website Speeds
Snail-like pages push customers away. In 2021, a business loses roughly 25% of online visitors if the site takes more than 4 seconds to load! Slow website speeds can also impact your SEO standings, decreasing traffic and sales conversions.
Test Your Restaurant Website Speed
Before you make any changes, evaluate your site's speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom. These tools assess your page performance and highlight problem areas that slow down your restaurant. Common culprits often include heavy themes, excessive images, slow servers, and too many plugins.
Better Bites with a Speedy Website
After identifying these speed issues, take action to ramp up your page speed. Meet your page response times by implementing the proposed suggestions, such as upgrading to faster servers, deleting unnecessary features, or compressing images with tools like TinyPNG.
Mobile-Friendly Masterpiece
Since more than half of restaurant customers prefer ordering from their mobile devices, ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Orderable's lightweight design doesn't slow down your page speed, making it the perfect tastemaker for their online ordering experience from start to finish.
2. Easy and Tempting Menu Navigation
When the menu is tricky to navigate, customers struggle to find what they're craving. Confusing layouts, misleading descriptions, and hidden options repel hungry customers, bringing your sales counter to a halt.
A Friends-in-Food Menu Layout
Opt for a user-friendly, well-organized menu layout that makes it simple for customers to find, browse, and select their dishes. Orderable offers beautifully designed yet customizable food cards that clearly display each item's name, image, details, and buying button.
Enhanced Customer Experience
With Orderable, you also have access to features that boost your customers' dining experience, such as:
- Dietary labels showing allergens or preferences (e.g., vegan, kosher, or halal options).
- Useful nutritional information for health-conscious diners.
- Customizable options using product variations or add-ons.
3. Streamlined Checkout Process
A sluggish or complicated checkout process leaves customers with a sour taste. Baymard Institute reports that 22% of customers abandon the checkout process if it's too tedious, while 26% will leave if forced to create an account. A long and stressful checkout equates to lost revenue.
Efficient Cart Success
Redefine the payment process with Orderable's quick and simple checkout system. Customers will appreciate the streamlined experience as they only have to enter their contact information, specify the delivery or pick-up time, select their payment method, and confirm.
Order Control Center
While customers this way, Orderable also equips you with powerful tools, such as:
- Adding gratuity prompts to boost your sales revenue.
- Redemption of coupon codes for discounts.
4. Scheduled Orders Made Easy
Offering customers the option to pre-order enables you to tap into a new customer base seeking to plan their meals ahead of time. Both busy customers and families can pre-order for special occasions or weeknights. Failure to provide this option can cost you potential sales opportunities.
Pre-Order Perks
Take advantage of Orderable's time slot management feature to let customers schedule their orders. Keep the potential customers well-informed by displaying the option on your website.
Smart Slots
With time slots, customers can pick a specific delivery window that suits their schedule, while you keep your kitchen staff efficient by limiting the number of orders they can handle for each slot.
5. Variety of Payment Options
Different customers prefer various payment methods. Restrictive payment options can deter customers from completing their orders, negatively affecting your sales.
Payment Playground
Keep your diners satisfied by offering them their favorite payment options: debit or credit cards (e.g., Visa, Mastercard, AMEX), digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal), and cash on delivery (if applicable). Orderable effortlessly integrates with WooCommerce to set up multiple payment options for seamless transactions.
6. Order Tracking and Confirmation
Neglecting to update customers can leave them hanging. Concerned customers who don't receive delivery status updates could turn to your competitors or stop ordering from you completely.
Real-Time Delivery Updates
With Orderable, you can stay connected with your customers throughout the ordering process. Create custom statuses to notify customers about any changes to their order. Send delivery updates via email, text, or WhatsApp to ensure they're always in the loop.
7. Reliable Customer Support
When customers encounter obstacles or need to change their orders, easy access to support is essential to maintaining their happiness. Ignoring customer queries can mean lost opportunities, hurtful reviews, and a blemish on your restaurant's reputation.
Help Kitchen Staff Cater to Customer Needs
Simplify access to customer support by displaying your phone number, email, or live chat on your website. In addition, create an FAQ section answering common questions like "Can I modify my order after placing it?" or "How can I track my delivery?" A straightforward support system makes life easier for both your customers and your staff.
Wrapping Up
To create a satisfying dining experience for your customers, it's crucial to understand their online food ordering system preferences. By addressing the concerns hampering their enjoyment, you can reduce abandonment rates and increase sales.
A tool like Orderable transforms your restaurant's online ordering strategy, guaranteeing a smooth experience for both your customers and staff. Jumpstart your favorable food order revolution now!
- To enhance the customer experience and increase sales, personalize food recommendations through cross-selling and up-selling strategies with Orderable's user-friendly features.
- Participate in the food-and-drink lifestyle movement by embracing technology, offering food delivery, online ordering, table ordering, and QR code ordering for a seamless customer experience.
- Research and test technology solutions, such as Orderable, to provide commission-free transactions for an increase in profit margins without sacrificing quality service.
- Prioritize customer needs when designing an online ordering system, focusing on elements like mobile optimization, user-friendly menu navigation, fast checkout, scheduled orders, various payment options, and clear communication channels.
- Optimize the online ordering process for a more delightful customer experience and greater retention by addressing common issues like slow website speeds, confusing menu layout, tedious checkout process, lack of order tracking, and poor customer support.
