Gearing Up for the Future of Online Ordering

The competition is fierce for guests’ online business, and restaurants and c-stores are working to keep their brands competitive and stay on top of platforms as they grow ever more sophisticated and ease-of-ordering takes center stage.

Now is the time to prepare yourself — and your business — by learning about the new features and differentiators hitting the market, how they’ll impact the guest experience, and which will be critical to your brand’s success.

You’ll get a great head start by checking out the recent Paytronix webinar How to Prepare for Next Generation Online Ordering.

Highlights included overviews of:

Menu testing. Your menu’s presentation online really impacts how guests interact with it. Menu variant testing allows you to run different versions of your menu at the same time to determine which is most profitable.

For example, imagine you are a pizza brand testing four menus: One with pies front and center, one that forces guests to scroll past appetizers first, one that removes unpopular items, and one that removes infrequently ordered modifiers. You can test these menus at the same time, dictating what percentage of guests sees each. The back end software tracks multiple KPIs, from conversion rate to average order size (AOV), and automatically determines which menu works best.  

Menu testing must be a continuous process to be effective for your business. Fortunately, the technology is here to make sure that you’re always putting the best menu forward.

Artificial intelligence. Intelligent cross-selling offers an excellent way to build check sizes. AI tracks what your guests place in their carts and uses the information to make smart recommendations. As the operator, you can set rules on the back end to make logical suggestions.

You might recommend a bacon add-on to someone ordering a cheeseburger, for example, but for a guest ordering a vegan black bean burger, you’d suggest a side salad instead.

In the restaurant and c-store of the future, intelligent cross-selling is acting as the in-person server who offers an intuitive suggestion based on a guest’s order in real time.

Analytics. Today’s technology allows online ordering platforms to build customizable dashboards that pull results in real time. That means operators can get immediate insight into brand performance.

The options are endless. KPIs can be toggled based on time, location, and individual store. You can see what portion of sales are coming from credit cards, gift cards, and cash, and you can measure sales by day based on fulfillment method, like curbside versus in-store checkout.

The information you gather can tell you where you have room for improvement, inform staffing decisions, and provide a much stronger sense of what guests want from your brand. 

Integrations with Google, loyalty, and more. Guests are coming to your brand in more ways than ever. Connecting the various channels not only ensures a streamlined guest experience, it allows you to collect data and information about who your guests are and what they’re looking for.

Restaurant online ordering platforms like our own integrate with dozens of partners to ensure your online ordering solution works with your existing tech stack, like your point of sale. Plus, with the new Order Through Google integration, brands can opt in to connect guests to the Order & Delivery platform directly through a Google search. The order will then be sent to the POS at the local store, eliminating a step for guests and creating a frictionless experience. 

The platform also integrates guest engagement programs like loyalty and first-party online ordering, which boosts enrollment, allows guests more flexibility in earning and redeeming their rewards.

Are you curious about which features will serve your brand best down the line? We’d love to talk you through it. Contact us at paytronix.com or call (617) 649-3300, ext. 5.