The increasing popularity of technology has led businesses to become more tech-savvy, which has resulted in brands shifting their business to the online world. As more and more businesses are shifting to the online world, the competition of acquiring more and more customers has become fierce.
The Food & Beverage industry is going through the same transition. In order to survive and make profit, an online food ordering business must have a competitive edge over others. Therefore, creating a unique selling proposition (USP) is essential to succeed for an online food ordering business.
The best approach to create a USP for your business is to build it around the pain points of your customers. According to a research conducted by Alphawise, following are the major hurdles that keep customers from ordering food online.
Based on this study, here in this post, we have mentioned how these major pain points of customers can be effectively used to build USP, without incurring any loss, to ensure success of your online food ordering startup.
Customers would rather prefer dining in or pick-up meals instead of paying high prices for delivery. The key driver of any food ordering website is to provide customers the convenience of getting food delivered at their doorstep without having to pay too much for the delivery.
If you want to attract customers by low delivery charges and do not want to incur losses in the process, make sure you save on the operational cost. It can only be reduced when the time and resources are used optimally. The entire process of picking up the food and delivering to the destination needs to be streamlined perfectly to make sure that there are no extra resources consumed in the process.
The backend systems/apps for restaurant ordering & delivery should be in perfect sync (for notifying customers/delivery boys & tracking orders) to ensure the minimum consumption of time & resources.
Customers have grown used to ordering food online, and now they want flexibility in getting the food delivered as per their needs. Providing customers the option to get their food delivered according to their requirement can be a very effective technique to grab their attention & retain them.
Allow customers to order food according to their schedule through the pre-order feature.Some customers would want to schedule their food delivery on a specific time. Restaurants can be notified of the scheduled food orders well before the expected delivery time & prepare meals accordingly, so that customers get their orders perfectly on time.
Also, allowing customers to order through the website but pick up from the outlet. It gives customers more convenience to order food online. Adding such features to the online food ordering system will make it a scalable venture.
We live in the “I want it now” era. Customers nowadays prefer immediacy in their online purchases, especially when it comes to food. Most customers would rather just dine in instead of waiting for an hour-long (or maybe even longer) delivery. For that reason, the minimum order time that most food ordering websites offer is 45-60 minutes, which is one of the biggest pain points of the customers.
The easiest way to implement this is as soon as the customer places the orders make sure the notification is sent to the restaurant. The faster will the food be prepared, the faster will it be delivered. Aim for a 15-30 minutes delivery time frame, which already many food delivery services and cloud kitchen startups like swiggy are offering. Also, advise restaurants to prepare more of popular food orders in advance so that a big portion of orders can be shipped out to customers instantly.
Pro Tip: Make sure the quality of food is intact that means the food should be hot and presentable when the food is delivered to the customer.
The key reason for which customers order food online is convenience. In a few clicks, customers can browse the list of restaurants in their area, check the menu and order food. Food ordering websites should strive to create an experience that is convenient for customers to use.
Best way to attract customers is to provide an easy navigation on the website. Customers do not want to be stuck in the maze of ordering food online which is why websites should prefer to keep the navigation as simple as possible. Additionally, food ordering marketplaces can now tie up with Facebook to allow customers to order food directly through the app.
Apart from that, regular customers should be given the option to save their favorite order on the website so that next time the order can be placed quickly. To further quicken the process of ordering customer should be given the option to save their payment details on the website. The important thing to note is that customers will only save this detail if they have trust on the website. Hence businesses should follow proper security measures to keep user data safe.
Customers mostly choose their favorite online food ordering website on the basis of diversity in food cuisines. Some people search for a restaurant in their area which offers a particular cuisine. If a food ordering website has limited restaurant tie-ups it will lead to limited cuisines. In that case, customers will prefer some other food ordering website rather than yours.
Make sure you spread the word about your business across the market and make tie-ups with most of the restaurants. Make links with restaurants that offer different cuisines. To implement this you have to do the groundwork and tie up with maximum restaurants in the market you are serving. Building your food ordering website with a readymade script that offers an array of marketing features is a good starting point in that context. Besides working on the customer needs it is equally important to practice digital marketing for restaurants to make a strong online presence.
It is clear from above discussion that building a food ordering startup by keeping in mind the pain points of customers will help you create an effective USP for your business. The role of the unique selling proposition isn’t only to distinguish your business from others to attract customers, but also to give your business a mission, as to how your food ordering startup would play its unique part to enhance the customer experience. And it is only by perceiving USP in that manner will you be able to implement it effectively and stand out from the competition. You may start your online food ordering business hassel-free using an online food ordering solution.
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After earning her master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication, she knew that writing was the only thing that may never perish her zeal so she began her career as a content writer. She enjoys spending time with friends and "Friends" also happen to be her favorite television series.
