How to Calculate Your Online Ordering System's ROI

Let’s face it. You spend a lot of money on your online ordering system. It was a necessary investment since so many people order items and food online, but how can you be sure that you’re getting the most out of it? Have you ever taken the time to calculate your Return On Investment/ROI? By making sure you’re getting a great ROI, you’re making sure that it was a good choice for your business.

The ROI Formula

ROI= (Gain from investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

The gain from the investment is all of the possible benefits that you get from a point of sale based on time and money. Gain needs to be high to be more successful.

What You Need to Know about Online Ordering:

Research the technologies and their limitations.

Before you buy into an online ordering system, or evaluate your current online ordering system, you need to know that not all solutions or applications are the same. When building for cost-effectiveness, you may be missing out on tools. Others are built to integrate with your existing POS or other platforms, but these will have a longer lead time. You need to understand your end goal and what you want to get out of the systems that you use. It’s important to research the options to find the right direction for your business based on your goals.

Think big and be positive

It’s not going to be lucrative for your business if you go into it with a poor attitude or wrong mindset. You should think of all the ways that the system could benefit your company and make sure you’re utilizing it to its full potential. Make sure you’re enhancing your menu and using the latest ordering features.

Know your POS

When you add online and mobile ordering technology, you need to make sure that it is able to integrate with your already existing Point of Sale (POS) system. If the systems aren’t able to interact, you will have problems with accurately tracking food and order auditing. By integrating the systems you’ll be able to track your inventory from both online orders and dine-in orders.

If you know your POS well, you will be able to implement your online and mobile platforms more quickly. You also want to make sure to build your relationships with your POS vendor and online solutions provider in order to have better support for new upgrades and updates.

Make sure you allocate enough internal resources

You need to make sure to have the internal support for the implementation and maintenance of your online and mobile solutions. If you don’t have this, you risk reducing your ROI. Online and mobile ordering can be greatly profitable if you invest the time to make it worthwhile.

Make sure to measure and analyze your results

In order to increase your ROI, you need to be able to measure and analyze your key metrics. This will give you an ROI number and help you understand what changes to make to maximize your revenue and make sure your customers are happy. The happier your customers are, the greater profit you’ll see overall.

Why Online Ordering Systems Work and Improve ROI:

As long as the system is easy to navigate, your customers will be able to order exactly what they want. This puts the ordering completely in their control so there won’t be any mix-ups. Mistakes can happen more easily when someone calls in an order as it could be hard to hear the person on the phone and the order could be written down incorrectly.

There any many things to consider in terms of ROI. People may be more inclined to order more, especially if you offer online specials and targeted marketing. Your marketing campaign will also bring in more customers and help to avoid mistakes. It’s important to have an effective marketing campaign when using an online ordering system. Pictures of the food need to be present as this will be the biggest draw along with online specials and suggesting add-ons to what people are already ordering. For example, using targeted marketing to suggest that someone order soda or breadsticks when they order a pizza. Add-ons, such as charging extra for avocado, to sandwiches can also be helpful in increasing your bottom line.

People expect many restaurants to offer online ordering and could be more likely to order from you if you offer this as well. Depending on the kind of restaurant you run, it may or may not make sense to have this offering. For many restaurants it will be beneficial, but you need to evaluate your business’ specific situation through ROI as well as make sure you have an effective marketing campaign.