Content

Introduction

The current pandemic has brought serious problems to many businesses in the hospitality industry. Online businesses are changing rapidly and need to addapt to the changing businessl andscape Restaurants are not an exception. Over the past months, we’ve seen a significant transition in this industry which will most likely also continue in the following years.

Having an efficient online presence and being able to sell meals online have been a competitive advantage for those who invested in their digital marketing & online solutions before. In fact, the crisis was a huge opportunity for some but a major disaster for others – and the key factor influencing which restaurant ends up in which of those two groups is clear: digital marketing.

In this guide, you’ll find a list of solutions that will become a stable part of your restaurant business growth in the upcoming years and how Ciphers Digital can help you achieve that.

1. Brilliant Website With Clear List of Your Meals

2021 and the following years aren’t just about having a website – these times are over! It’s not enough anymore to “build your own website” with one of the DIY tools and their ads you’ve been bombarded on YouTube and other social media. These tools are not built specifically for your restaurant business and cannot compete with other restaurants in your town that take online marketing seriously and invest in proper solutions which solve their problems.

One of the most important parts of your restaurant website is your menu. It’s also the reason, why most people even visit it and it’s also a converting point – would you like to go to a restaurant where you don’t know their menu? While we cannot guarantee that you’ll meet the users’ taste after they read your menu, we can make sure they find it easily and you can make instant changes to it without having a hard time or calling your developer and paying for his time.

Example of a backend editor for a restaurant menu

At Ciphers Digital, we prepare a fully customizable menu page for our restaurant clients which is fully prepared for their type of restaurant (because there’s often a different structure of menu for a Steak House and Pizza Restaurant). Our customers can easily manage their meals – it as easy as changing the text in a simple Excel table. These meals are then displayed in a clean way based on the digital branding of your restaurant. 

Example of a frontend display of your restaurant menu

2. Sell Your Meals Online

During the pandemic as well as after it, the demand for online meal delivery has increased dramatically. Having a functional system that solves customers’ needs is a must.

2.1 Great Looking & Converting Online Restaurant

At Ciphers Digital, we’re able to prepare a fully functional, reliable, and especially converting website for your restaurant, including a customized order functionality. Your customers must find easily what they look for and the whole ordering process must be smooth. 

Example of a delivery menu 

The order menu must contain some of the crucial parts for conversion – such as a Call to Action button (CTA) and an appealing meal image. We’ll customize this menu to match your brand.

2.2 Check Users Location Before Entering Your Order Menu

Your restaurant will typically deliver orders in a given area. It can be really frustrating and time consuming to call your customers that you can’t deliver their order because you just can’t send your driver so far (who would like to deny customers?). We have an efficient solution for this – simply ask your potential customer where he/she wants to deliver the order and apologize if the area isn’t reachable for you. All fully automatic, hussle-free. Automatization is the highest priority for us at Ciphers Digital.

Our solution can recognize whether your potential customer’s area is within your delivery area or not

2.3 Let (and teach) Your Customers Pay Online in Advance

When your customer gives you a wrong address or when no one answers a phone attached to the particular order, you may end up losing your time preparing the meal and delivering it and of course money. However, we can easily implement credit card payments (as well as PayPal Apple Pay, and Google Pay) for your restaurant. The order is not submitted unless your customer successfully pays for it. 

Example of an implemented payment gateway at the end of the order process

2.4 Local PickUp & Delivery Options

Whereas some of your customers may want to pick up their order physically in your restaurant, others may prefer the meals to be delivered to their home. With our solution, you can easily offer both options to your customers. 

Let your customers choose between local pickup and delivery to their address

2.5 Avoid Capacity Issues With Delivery Slots

During lunchtime, it can easily happen that you receive more orders than what you’re able to deliver to your customers within an expected time period. Even though it is a good problem to have, we also have a solution for it. You can easily set up your delivery capacity and our automatized solution makes sure that you’re never overwhelmed by too many orders which need to be delivered within the next 40 mins. 

During the order process, your customer can pick one from your available time slots for delivery – these are automatically updated after every order. For instance, if you don’t have the capacity to deliver within the next 40 minutes, your can still offer your customer to get the meal in 1,5 hrs. By doing that, you avoid bad references from people waiting for their meals too long (but expecting them to be delivered immediately). 

Example of delivery slots – days

Example of delivery slots – hours

Our solution is also great for customers who’d like to get the food on a different day (for example for a family party at the weekend), so they can easily reserve your delivery time and you have more time to prepare all meals.

You can also choose the days and hours you do delivery and accept orders (so that you don’t have to care about them at night etc.).

2.6 Other Features of Our Technical Solution for Restaurants

The points above are just highlights of our solution. In fact, we offer much more. For every customer, Ciphers Digital prepares a unique mix of features that suits them best. 

Below is a summary of other features you and your customers will love:

• Free shipping for orders above a certain amount (for example, free shipping for orders above $50)
• Automatic receipts sent to your customer’s email after the order is done
• Customer SignUp and Login
• Discount for logged-in customers
• Special discount for chosen customers (for example, your loyal ones)
• Extras to your meals (Want to offer extra pineapple to pizza Hawaii? No problem!)
• Quantity management (Do you have a daily menu with a certain amount of meals? Easily set a quantity for each meal, so that it only sells until you have it cooked)
• App notifications (We make sure the order management is as easy as possible for you)
• Printing orders (Easily print your orders for your driver with one click)
• Detailed statistics (Know exactly which meals sell the best and when)
• Minimum order amount
• Restricted items for kids

3. Be Visible For Your Customers

You can have the best technical solution for your restaurant but it won’t bring you revenues without marketing. You simply need to be visible and get traffic to your website. This is what we’re passionate about here at Ciphers Digital, and what we have years of experience with. 

The very first step is to make sure that it is worked on your SEO (Seach Engine Optimization) constantly so that you become more and more popular with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This also consists of Local SEO which is particularly important for restaurants. 

Example of a successful Google My Business profile

We will also help you with setting up a nice Google My Business profile and make sure that you can be found on Google Maps, Yelp, Tripadvisor and other important databases your customers use to search for restaurants. 

It is also recommended to use PPC (Pay Per Click) ads on Facebook to boost your performance on Facebook, Google, and other platforms. After a detailed analysis of the market and your competitor’s performance on social media and search engines, we make sure your budget is spent as efficiently as possible (so that you don’t pay for ads when you sleep and can’t prepare the meals!). 

4. Manage Your Social Media Properly

Social media are a must. They are the way you stay in touch with your customers. We’ll manage your social media to boost your brand’s awareness and bring new, high-paying customers who leave a five-star review and tell all their friends about you. Our team of top-notch photographers will make your social media full of amazing pictures of your food which will create a fast emotion and make everyone hungry. You’ll be presented as the prominent place where the best food in the town is made. Your restaurant will kill it on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TickTock!

Example of a successful Instagram profile

5. Use Newsletter To Engage With Your Customers

Social media are just one way to be engaged with your customers. Regardless of what others say, we don’t believe newsletters are dead in 2021. The opposite is true. Our campaigns often reach 50% open rates and 30% click rates. With our know-how, the newsletter can easily become another strong marketing tool in your arsenal.

Example of a converting newsletter popup

We’re also able to connect newsletters with your ordering system, so when you send an email with a 50% OFF coupon valid for the particular day only, we track exactly how effective is the campaign. By comparing newsletter campaigns, we are able to optimize your marketing strategy in long run and make every newsletter more and more converting.  Once you have a rest of your lunch menu that you’d like to sell as fast as possible, we can arrange it easily with our fully automatic newsletter solution.

Example of a newsletter report

Revenue converting from the newsletter is absolutely free and therefore essential for every restaurant business which wants to be ahead of its competitors.

6. Optimize Your Website With A/B Testing  & Heatmaps

As stated above, the conversion is our highest priority at Ciphers Digital. When working with us, you can be sure that we’ll always look for new ways how to optimize your website and content for better results. We work tirelessly to proof every pixel of your website and secure the best user experience and maximal conversion rate. 

One of the methods we use for website optimization is A/B testing. For instance, we change the background color of the “Order Now” button for 50% of the visitors while the other half of them will still see the original color. Our system will give us detailed statistics and if we find out the button with the new background color was clicked more times than the old one, we simply change the color for all visitors. We do this with every single element of your website. 

Example of A/B Testing for CTA (Call To Action) background-color

Another method we use is heatmaps. This technology allows us to see where customers spend the most time with their cursor. By analyzing the heat maps, we’re able to find an issue in UX (user experience) and improve it. 

7. Ending Thoughts

Having a successful restaurant requires much than great meals and excellent services. The pandemic showed us that this market is much more digital than many thought. It is luckily still in the early stages and you still have a chance to start automate your business!

Get in touch with our CEO Mike Rux and talk about your business and how we can help you thrive on the market!

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