Technology has changed almost every aspect of our lives, sometimes making things easier and sometimes making things more difficult. However, for businesses, especially those in the food industry, technology has transformed the way they operate. Online food ordering has become popular for several reasons. For one, it’s easy for customers. And two, it’s great for business.

If your restaurant has been slow to adapt to new technologies, such as online ordering, there’s no better time than now to invest in an online ordering system. Below, you can find the top 10 reasons that online ordering is the key to business success.

Customer Experience

 Perhaps the best reason to setup an online ordering system is that your customers expect one. The restaurant business is all about customer experience, and that means making sure your customers have a great dining experience, whether that is in-house or online. Without a convenient online ordering system, your customers, disappointed, can easily click over to a different competitor restaurant that does offer online ordering, which means you lose a sale.

Edge Out Competition

 Small restaurants need every advantage over their competition in order to survive. As mentioned above, online ordering can make the difference between losing multiple sales a day or gaining loyal customers who prefer to order online. If you’re the only small restaurant of your specific cuisine around that offers online ordering, you will have a competitive edge over all your competitors.

Order Accuracy

 Order accuracy is one of the best reasons to have online ordering. Often, orders taken over the phone can get lost in translation, which can lead to incorrect orders and unhappy customers. Online ordering allows customers to customize their orders and choose exactly what they want without any confusion.

Employee Productivity

 Online ordering can also lead to increased employee productivity. As they no longer have to spend precious time on the phone taking and going over orders, your employees will be free to work on actually putting orders together and on other tasks.

Easy Marketing

 Marketing can be made easy along with an online ordering system. You will be able to offer exclusive online coupons or promotions to customers ordering online, leading to increased sales.

Generate Website to Social Media Traffic

 Online ordering can also help you increases your online traffic by encouraging customers to go from your social media pages to your website and vice versa. If a customer sees you on Facebook, they can easily hop over and order from you, and if they are already an online ordering customer, they may be interested to learn more about you on your social media pages.

Capture Customer Email Address

 Building an online newsletter can be difficult work, as no one really wants to give out their email address to every business they frequent. However, an online ordering system instantly captures customers email addresses for you, without you having to ask for anyone to signup for anything, and you can easily add those email addresses to your email list.

Promote Gift Card Sales

 Since customers are already hanging out on your website to make their online order, it’s easy to also promote the sale of electronic gift cards. You can offer the option of adding a gift card to their order or can setup special deals on gift cards to help increase sales.

Analytics and Reporting

 Online ordering is a great way to get insights into your customers through the use of analytics and reporting. You will be able to understand the demographics of your online customers, what items are selling best or least, and what times customers are ordering. You are then able to use this data to improve sales and customer experience.

Increase Revenue

 The last and best reason your restaurant needs online ordering is that it will increase your revenue. Outside ordering systems take a bit of the profit from you; however, having you own online point-of-sale system means you get to keep more of the profits. Additionally, as online ordering is only growing in popularity, more and more food sales will be online orders, and without an online ordering system of your own, you will be missing out on a ton of sales.