How to Select the Right Online Ordering System
One of the most important factors for any restaurant owner to consider is their customers’ needs and wants. You are in a tricky position of having to balance what works best for your restaurant and what will work best for your customers. One area that you need to consider improving is your online ordering system to make it more convenient for your customers to use while ensuring that it fits all of your internal needs, as well. Knowing how to select the right online ordering system involves examining all the pieces of the puzzle until you find the right fit. You may be wondering what puzzle pieces you need to consider, so here’s a breakdown of them for you.
Customer Piece
When thinking of the customers, you need to consider that you’ll need to help them by getting an easy to understand and use online ordering system. It defeats the whole purpose of an online ordering system if they end up calling your restaurant to place their order because they don’t understand something on the menu or have a question about it. So you really have to consider two things here: an easy to understand format for the way that an order is placed and the information provided about your menu. Most online ordering systems will have a user-friendly system, but try to find which one is going to be the best for your customers. Next, you want to make sure that the online ordering system will allow you to display the amount of information you need to show your full takeout menu. Consider if you’ll be able to post pictures of menu items along with how long the descriptions will be for each item.
Restaurant Piece
You also need to think about your restaurant. You may think that you should just stick with over-the-phone order taking for your restaurant, but consider the number of people that would benefit from an easy-to-use online ordering system. Your staff will no longer have to take time out of their tasks to try to answer a phone call with being able to hear everything that’s being said on the other line with all of the noise and racket going on. If you have to ask someone to repeat their order, that’s a waste of time that could be better spent on other aspects of your business. If it’s hard to hear, there’s also a good chance that even with repeating the order back, there could be some mistakes in it. Chances are if you’re having a difficult time hearing the order being called in, the person giving the order may also have a hard time making out what you’re saying back to them. An online ordering system should help you to get the best orders taken easily and correctly the first time around. You’ll just need to find one that has the notification system that you need that will help streamline how your kitchen responds to takeout orders. It should have easy to understand reports of online orders to be filled so that no mistakes are made in the kitchen.
Ordering System Piece
The last puzzle piece is the online ordering system itself. You will want to consider what it has to offer. Will it function with your current point-of-service system or will you need to replace it? If it does integrate with your current system, is there anything you’ll need to change? How well will it fit into your current restaurant’s routine for takeout orders? Will you need a new website? Will they build your website if you don’t already have one? You’ll also want to consider the different costs involved with the different online ordering systems that you’re going over. You want to find something that offers great value while not breaking the bank so that it’ll fit nicely into your budget for your business. Each of these factors will play a big role in finding an online ordering system that will be beneficial to your business in meeting your customer’s needs and wants while serving your business as needed.
Putting It All Together
This information should help to start narrowing down your choices for which online ordering system is going to fit all of your internal and external needs. You want to make sure that you’ll have a new system that makes it easy for your customers to use, helps to improve the way that your orders are taken along with their accuracy, and fits in with your budget. You should be careful with what online ordering system you choose as it will have a crucial impact on your restaurant, your customers, and the takeout methodology of your restaurant.
There can be a lot of pressure on finding the right system for your restaurant. That’s where Orders2.me can come into play. Contact us today about how we can help you to implement the best online ordering system for your restaurant. We’re ready to help answer any questions or talk over any concerns you may have to get you the right service for your business.