If you are in the fast food industry and you don’t have an online ordering system, then you are missing out on a huge number of orders, as well as massive business opportunities that could help you to take your business further.

If you aren’t already convinced of this, then read on and hopefully you’ll see by the end of this post why you shouldn’t go a single day more without making that investment.

The idea behind an online ordering system is simple: to allow your customers to put in orders online.

If you don’t have an ordering system already, then chances are that you have two primary ways that people order from you:

• They come into store
• They call up

While both these systems might be working just fine for you, there are a lot of scenarios where neither is going to be appropriate or convenient.

Let’s imagine a scenario where someone is having a party with friends at their house. They’ve had a bit to drink and no one is able to drive but they want to order in some pizzas or curry. So, they take a look on Google, hoping to find a restaurant that delivers.

If they find your restaurant but you don’t have an online ordering system, then there’s a good chance they’re just going to keep looking.

Why? Well for starters, trying to take 20 orders on the phone while there’s noise in the background isn’t fun for anyone. And most parties are simply going to discount that option before they even try.

Not only that, but even if they do try and call, they’re then going to need to worry about paying over the phone, waiting in a queue and hoping that you’re not engaged.

This makes a lot of extra work for them and for you. Especially if you have customers in your building that you’re struggling to cater for already!

Now imagine the alternative: a slick, mobile-friendly website that loads quickly and that can simply be passed around the group for each person to enter their order. Something like that is so much easier and it massively increases the likelihood that someone on your website will order food from you.

Guess what happens once someone has had a great experience using your online ordering system? They gravitate to you in future! When they need food quickly and reliably, they’ll remember the great experience they had and just how easy it was to order, and so they’ll pick you to get their food from.

Better yet, when someone uses your online delivery system, they’ll also be inputting their information – such as their email address and their physical address. That means you’ll now have their details to add to a mailing list and to market to in future.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to build engagement and to gain repeat business. In the world of internet marketing, this form of marketing is widely considered to be more important than any other, including SEO or social media.

But what precisely does email marketing entail? Why is it so effective? And do you really need to incorporate it into your own business strategy?

Let’s start with some stats to get your attention.

Did you know that email marketing has a ROI (return on investment) of 4,300%? It huge not only because of all the potential yield but also because of how low cost it is to manage. For those in the food industry, all you need is an online delivery system and you can collect emails at no extra cost!

Did you know that 91% of consumers will check their email daily? So, if you have a restaurant and you send out an email about your latest new meal or special deal, then it’s going to reach 91% of your patrons within 24 hours.

Seeing as most of us get notifications on our phones, a lot of those people will see those emails right away. And that means that you can time precisely when and how you want to reach your audience: message late on a Friday and your business will be fresh in their minds when they’re thinking of somewhere to get some quick food!

It’s not just internet marketers that proclaim the importance of email marketing. When surveyed, companies respond that email marketing is more profitable than PPC, content marketing, mobile ads, social media, direct marketing or any other form!

Did you know that 66% of consumers over 15 have made a purchase as a direct result of an email they’ve received? Of course once they’ve done it once, they’re far more likely to do it again and again.

And here’s the thing: anyone signed up to your mailing list is going to have done so because they want to know more about your business. Nobody signs up to a fast food list unless they’ve eaten there or unless they’re thinking of eating there.

And therefore, everyone you message is a potential customer. You will be reaching the most targeted and engaged audience possible in a way that will maximize the likelihood of them making a purchase.

Of course, it also comes down to how you use the mailing list. And in this case, the best strategy is to message only when you have something genuinely good to offer: a real discount or a new menu that people can get excited about. Nudge your readers in the right direction, at the right time and then when the moment comes, it will be highly likely that they’ll order from you.

But if you don’t have a mailing list? Then you’re missing out on all of those potential opportunities and you’re losing out to all the other takeaways that do have one.

How is your customer list right now? If you haven’t been collecting emails from your customers, or adding their details to a database, then you are potentially missing out on huge business opportunities and literally throwing away cash.

Every time someone comes to your website, or orders food from you, you should consider that person to not only be a customer, but to be a lead. This is an opportunity for future marketing, it is someone who has shown an interest in your food and a willingness to buy from you – and if you ignore that potential then you are missing out on a fantastic opportunity.

Today, most online ordering systems will include features that allow you to build a list based on your customers and to manage that list. In this post, we’re going to explore why that’s so important and why you absolute must include this in your strategy.

Mailing lists are not just used by takeaways and restaurants. Mailing lists are used all throughout business and are particularly common to find online, where they are used by marketers hoping to sell products.

And did you know that many of these internet marketers say that the mailing list is the single most important aspect of their business in terms of marketing and in terms of profits.

That’s because a mailing list gives them a way to reach their audience directly and without relying on a third party like Facebook or Twitter. It gives them a direct way to contact their audience in a format that is personal and that is hard to miss.

Not only that, but when people hand over their email address, they are demonstrating trust in the business and demonstrating interest in what they have to say. That means that the people who are on your mailing list are likely to be your most engaged followers and your ‘warmest’ leads.

That’s even truer for the takeaway industry, because the people on your mailing list are going to be people who have ordered from you in the past. That means they’re near, it means they like the food you sell and it means they’re not against ordering food online or eating takeaways. In other words, they’ve ordered once, so they’re more likely to order again!

Using an online delivery system is a fantastic way to build your mailing list, but what do you do with it once you’ve built it?

There are lots of options. Perhaps the most obvious is simply to invite your old customers to come back and order from you again. You can do this directly (by simply asking them to come back!) or you can try to entice them back with special offers and promotions.

For instance, if you have a new special in, you can send an email around to all the people who have ordered online before and explain why it’s so delicious. Maybe it’s a one-time thing. Maybe it’s an opportunity they can’t afford to miss.

Either way, you’ll likely pique their interest. Their details are already entered. They already know they love your food. And when it gets to Friday night, they just have to click the link, open the site and click ‘Order’.

If you’re getting a service to build a website for you, or perhaps a single page or a tool like an ordering service, then it is absolutely crucial that you ensure the site is going to be mobile friendly. This is something that is important for any business. But it is even more important if you are in the catering industry and you’re building a website or page to take orders. Here are some reasons why a mobile responsive website should be considered compulsory.

First though, we should probably go over what ‘mobile responsive’ actually means in the first place. And the answer is simple: a mobile responsive website is a website that is friendly for use on mobile.

Actually, that is what we call ‘mobile friendliness’. Mobile responsiveness describes web design that is friendly in a very specific way. Essentially, this means that a website responds to the display it is being viewed on by altering its layout and its design.

A mobile friendly website is one that has large buttons that can be touched with a finger instead of a mouse, that has large font to be read on a smaller display and that doesn’t need to be scrolled sideways.

This encompasses mobile responsiveness, which means the website will become mobile friendly when it is loaded up onto a mobile device. If the user loads your site on a desktop, it should show more information and should be ideal for navigating with a mouse and keyboard. If they load it on a mobile phone, then the images will become smaller, certain elements will be removed and the text will appear larger and centred.

So why is this so important?

Well the first and most obvious reason is that a lot of people are going to be ordering your food on their mobile devices. This is particularly common for a takeaway, when people might want to pass a phone around a party for ordering, or when they might not be at home when they’re ordering. Maybe they’re staying in a hotel for instance and don’t have access to a computer?

If your visitors need to squint and scroll around the screen, then they’re not going to trust the ordering system and they’re likely to look elsewhere for their food. At the very least, they’re unlikely to consider the experience pleasurable and might look elsewhere next time.

Mobile responsiveness also has important benefits beyond that though too. For one, it actually increases the likelihood that they’ll find your website on Google to begin with. That’s because Google is aware of just how many people tend to use mobiles when browsing the web. Because Google wants to show its users the best, highest quality content, that means that it will actually help mobile friendly sites to rise through the ranks while penalizing sites that aren’t mobile friendly.

Google has mandated that all sites should make some attempt to introduce mobile-friendly design sensibilities and if you don’t follow suit, your visitor count will suffer!