In a blog post earlier this month, we talked about how NetWaiter’s online ordering system can help you cater to increased demand for customization - requests for extra meat, double avocado, or other add-ons.

To help accommodate these requests, in addition to upselling the order, it’s important to include any paid option as a selection customers can click to add.  But what happens if a customer enters a separate request in the Special Instructions field that should incur an additional charge?

These special instructions, which restaurants are happy to fulfill, can cause a difficulty when an order is pre-paid. Do you honor the request for extra turkey, even though you haven’t been paid for it, or do you hold off and not include it?

To address this, NetWaiter has developed a Secondary Transaction Feature to allow a restaurant to run a separate charge on a customer’s card, after the initial transaction, to pay for that special request.

This is also a handy feature to add a tip.  A customer may not have thought about a tip when placing their online order, but the Secondary Transaction Feature allows delivery drivers to add a tip to an order, after the initial payment, if the customer tells them to.

Another new addition to NetWaiter is the Hidden Item list.  NetWaiter has always allowed restaurants to “hide” items on their menu, most often because the kitchen has run out of a key ingredient or the item was a limited special that may come back in the future.

This new feature shows “All Hidden Items” in one section of the Management Console for easy management.  Managers can see all items on their menu that are hidden, in one place, and then unhide those that they want to be available again.

Online ordering is one of the best tools restaurants can use to position themselves against larger chains that dominate the market.  Indeed, there might not be a better time to be an independent or small chain than right now, especially if you offer online ordering.

Yahoo Finance reports that customer traffic at large casual-dining restaurants slid 2% this past December. Reasons cited for this traffic decrease? Oversaturation, to be sure. How many large intersections in a city contain two or more casual-dining concepts?

Another is the rise of fast casual chains, the most prominent examples of which are Chipotle and Panera. Restaurants like these have seen sales increase 15% annually for the last five years. What do they offer? Made-to-order meals, made in a hurry. To sum it up in one word we all know well, they offer - convenience.

Also, a consumer trend we are seeing return is called “cocooning”, a word first coined back in 1981. Large-screen HD televisions, services such as Netflix, and the ability to buy almost anything online has resulted in more and more consumers coming home from work and never leaving the house again.

If they don’t want to go out for a meal or cook at home, their only alternative is the convenience of takeout. This is why online ordering is so helpful.  Customers crave convenience, especially takeout customers.  Offering customers the ability to order from your NetWaiter site helps them just as much as it helps your restaurant.

When NetWaiter brings you a new online ordering customer, our statistics show the likelihood is that they will return to place their second order within 14 days.  This is important.  New customers, and specifically ones that come back again and again, are one of the principal engines of growth.

It is safe to say that the convenience of online ordering is what draws them in, and is part of what keeps them coming back. What can you do to make sure your online ordering process is as convenient as possible, so they keep coming back to your restaurant?  Here are some quick tips:

Make the pickup process smooth and easy.  If you can, have a separate area for pickup orders, preferred parking, and your most personable employee working the counter.  These are all things we’ve talked about before, but are worth repeating.

Take advantage of NetWaiter’s pre-payment capabilities.  While one industry study indicated that less than 19% of online customers pre-pay for orders, that number is significantly higher with NetWaiter.  When given the option, 68% of all NetWaiter customers choose to pre-pay online.  The figure jumps to 77% when looking at just delivery orders.  Be sure to enable online payments and receive funds directly to your merchant account.

In past articles, we’ve discussed the benefits of using photos on your NetWaiter menu.  Now there is another reason to show photos, and this is especially pertinent for tablet and mobile users.

As reported in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, if you touch something you like, you’ll want it more. It might also explain, in terms of dollars, why online orders tend to be larger than phone-in orders.

When a customer holds something in their hands, they imagine themselves in control.  They get a sense of ownership.  Research has found this to be true even on touchscreen devices, where the viewer has some control.  Customers don’t handle the food in your restaurant before deciding to order, but the ability to touch an image or menu item on a handheld device or tablet gives them a sense of ownership and control.  It precipitates that thought of, “Yeah, I want to order this.”

All the more reason to drop in as many photos as you can of your menu items.  Customers will feel as if they are holding and touching the actual item.  Pay attention to the quality of the photography, too. Other studies show that the sense of ownership is enhanced when the photography is particularly vivid.

NetWaiter and Photos: a winning combination for larger orders and a healthy bottom line.

Restaurant customers are, of their own will, flocking to convenient technologies such as using online ordering for takeout & delivery.  But, as one hospitality executive observed in The Wall Street Journal last month, "When you lose the experience of ordering with somebody who can give you an intelligent answer, you lose, well, hospitality."

Although it’s the ideal way to order, personal touch is still important in online ordering.  How can restaurants that grow their business with online ordering keep customers happy by maintaining a personal touch?  Consider some of these tips and tactics:

1.    Select your pickup counter personnel and delivery crew based, in part, how personable they are. A friendly greeting and exchanging quick, pleasant niceties goes a long way with customers and your brand.

2.    Make sure the personnel who handle pickups and deliveries know and use the names of the customers.  As Dale Carnegie said, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

3.    As an owner, pick up the phone periodically and call a customer who ordered online.  Ask them how their order was, how the delivery driver treated them, and thank them for their business.  Not only will you make a personal contact, but you will receive invaluable feedback and respect.

Many restaurants have a philosophy about using multi-restaurant online ordering portals - they grit their teeth and do it. 

Most of the time restaurants allow themselves to be listed on portal sites to get any exposure they may bring.  According to a Cornell Hospitality Report, though, “nearly half of the consumers on multiple-restaurant sites (47.1%) said they clicked over to the restaurant’s own website to order their food” once they found a restaurant they liked. That’s good news for restaurants using NetWaiter – it can, not only save the restaurant a lot of money, but also allow the restaurant to interact with their customers directly, rather than be ‘commoditized’ on a restaurant portal.

The bottom line – portals can charge some outrageous fees.  According to a recent piece in Gourmet Marketing, a well-known portal site they investigated "keeps their contract terms behind close(d) doors, and the rates vary by restaurant. This incredible lack of transparency shortchange(s) restaurants… It gives restaurant owners little room to compare in competitive markets, especially as many times restaurant owners are bound by a non-disclosure agreement.”

The article notes that fees can range from 11% to as high as 20%.  In addition, restaurants don’t directly receive money from incoming orders – they have to wait for the portal to send them a check (minus their fees).  Not only that, as one restaurant owner admits, portal sites also use a restaurant’s customer list against you.  "I never see a report of who ordered through the portal," he said.  "I'm sure they are using my customer information to market themselves to other restaurants."

The message to restaurant owners is simple - if you use portal sites to help promote your restaurant, you should be very aggressive about converting those customers to your own online ordering site.  Rather than pay huge fees to a portal, customers that order directly from your site will allow you to extend your brand identity to them, receive payments directly, and capture your own customer information.

To capture those 47.1% of visitors that would rather order directly from your website, you need to make sure your ‘Order Online’ link is prominently displayed on your homepage.  Additionally, you should inform guests that have already used a portal to order from your restaurant that you have your own online ordering system, guaranteed to be up-to-date with the latest offers and menu information.  Including a flyer with each portal order or offering a first-time discount for using your system are good ways to make sure their next order will be “NetWaitered” from your restaurant.