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Buyer’s Guide for Food Delivery Software

Buyer’s Guide for Food Delivery Software

Ongoing digitalization has impacted the food industry significantly. One way it’s made consumers’ lives easier is the prominence of food delivery software. These apps have added a lot of convenience to the process of placing orders. Plus, they’ve helped restaurants and catering businesses significantly boost their sales and reinforce their online presence.

But when deciding on the ideal platform for your business, not all solutions are created equal. The platform you choose needs to have the best suited features for your operations and to provide an optimal user experience.

How to find the right food delivery software

Here are some of the most common features you may want to have in your chosen software:

Easy-to-use website builder

When setting up your website, you can go one of two ways: hire a web designer or do it yourself. Although the D.I.Y. version may sound daunting, especially if you don’t have much experience, choosing a software that has an intuitive user interface for building, managing and updating your website can alleviate these worries.

FoodStorm has its own website builder features, allowing catering businesses to host their entire website, including eCommerce, on one platform. Instant self-publishing, unlimited content pages and an embedded blog are just some of the key features offered to users.

Available analytics

Modern businesses need reliable ways to gather and analyze their business data to make informed decisions about their operations. When deciding on a food delivery software, business owners may want to consider their access to key metrics such as: upcoming catering sales, most popular items, website traffic, delivery heatmaps, customer feedback ratings and more.

Even better would be a software that provides a dashboard to visually represent these business intelligence metrics for even easier consumption and understanding. FoodStorm users have access to a 24/7 live dashboard showing these data points and more.

Sales tools

Choosing a food delivery software with built in sales tools can help you generate more and repeat purchases. Having the ability to offer promotions on your website or targeted to specific customers is key to maintaining your customers’ interest. Additionally, features such as abandoned carts notifications can help you capture potentially lost revenue through simple email reminders to customers.

Streamlined menus and easy order placement

User-friendly and mobile-responsive online menus are high on many caterers and restaurateurs priority list. Your eCommerce platform should provide a clear overview of your offerings, allowing customers to pick items easily.

The menu should allow various personalization options. For instance, FoodStorm Catering Software lets you have different menus for each of your customer types, along with different pricing. Wholesale clients get special treatment, too, enabling them to sell their offerings more efficiently. Additionally, if you have multiple locations, consider finding a platform with multi-site capabilities. By integrating with FoodStorm, customers can place orders from the nearest stores and find them using online maps.

Push notifications

Another important feature for your business could be push notifications. This allows your company to stay connected with your clients by sending them various notices and order updates. This includes messages informing them about discounts, loyalty programs and special offers. Consequently, you’ll add value to your communication and grab customer attention.

Real-time food delivery tracking

Apps with GPS allow you to identify your customers’ location once they’ve placed their orders. After confirming the area, people can easily monitor the progress of your delivery personnel, offering a remarkable user experience. Some of the most well-known APIs providing this function include Waze’s Navigation, Google Maps and MapKit. Whatever platform you opt for, consumers could appreciate the option to track their orders.

Simple payment methods

Payment methods play a key role in every organization. Even though this is the final process of placing orders, your customers may not return to your website or ordering profile if they face issues. For this reason, it’s crucial to provide simple gateways with many different options.

There are many widely-used services you can incorporate:

  • PayPal
  • Google Pay
  • iOS Wallet
  • Amazon Pay
  • Debit/Credit Card
  • Cash On Delivery (COD)
  • Account / House Invoices

Additionally, having secure payments is a great way to ensure customer trust. For example, FoodStorm helps catering companies stay PCI-compliant by capturing, transmitting and storing cardholder data through a validated provider. All sensitive data is encrypted and safely stored, eliminating the risk of breaches.

Order history

A simple way to improve user experience even further is to add the ability to see previous orders. This way, your customers can re-order their favorite or similar items without going through your menu again. There’s no need to use the search bar either, providing a seamless process.

Customer reviews

Your efforts may also be aimed at improving your reach based on client feedback. To that end, software that lets customers leave reviews is a wise investment. Their comments give you an insight into all the things you’re doing correctly, as well as the opportunities for improvement with your delivery process.

Therefore, make sure to encourage your clients to rate your services. It can help you decide whether some items from the menu should be removed or if certain foods receive lots of praise you could promote them strongly. On top of that, favorable ratings will help get the word out about your company and attract more consumers. This makes your business more popular, leading to growth.

Integrate with a streamlined software

If your food delivery application or software ensures a fantastic user experience, for you and your customers, your business will thrive in no time. Personalized and customizable menus, convenient order tracking, secure payments, and other key features, can help encourage your customers to return for repeat ordering.

Reach out to our expert team today and find out why FoodStorm Catering Software can work wonders for your company.

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