Online Orders Upsell
One of the most attractive features of online or web ordering is that it upsells and cross-sells for you. LaRosa's Pizza in Cincinnati, Ohio states that their average online orders are $1.25 more than their phoned counterparts. In the May/June 2005 issue of Pizza Marketing Quarterly, Two Guys Pizza of Moreno Valley, California, said their online orders averaged over $8.00 more per order.
Why are online orders significantly larger than phoned orders? There are probably several reasons for this. The online ordering process itself is far more leisurely. Online customers have no pressure to finish their order quickly. They can browse the online menu and make selections at their own pace. This alone could ensure the customers do a more thorough job of placing orders. But the online menu itself makes a contribution by reminding each customer to include beverages, appetizers and extras and by letting you set the size defaults to larger sizes.
A properly designed online menu will always display all the menu areas on screen. So when a customer is choosing an entree or pizza, there is a button or link somewhere on the screen reminding him to include a beverage, an order of breadsticks or a dessert. Best of all, it does this automatically for every customer, every time, without needing to be trained or reminded.
No matter how well trained and patient your employees, when a customer is talking to them on the phone, there is always an unspoken understanding that the customer needs to finish placing the order because the employee must serve other customers or return to cooking. This need to finish is absent from the online ordering experience. The lack of pressure coupled with the online menu's subtle reminders, results in larger tickets from web orders.
