Increasing off-premise sales: how to do digital best

It's safe to say that in recent times, restaurant brands have embarked on a significant digital journey. It’s more common for brands to offer an omnichannel experience to guests, with some having looked to transform their entire guest experience through digital.

Off-premise ordering is a beast, with so many different avenues you can look to connect with your audience. From your website, to an app, to third party apps, and beyond. But, what’s really the key for success when it comes to off-premise channels? Being digital for the sake of being digital could actually be costing you. As with anything, going digital needs to be strategic and intentional. Without looking to create an optimised omnichannel experience, you could be forfeiting conversions and customer retention.

We’ve compiled a list of insights for how brands can be sure their off-premise offerings are bringing in the conversion rate they hope and expect.

Everything starts with the storefront

First, let's look at the core of the digital experience, your storefront. There are a number of templated websites that will help brands get their online presence off the ground, but truly embarking on a digital experience has to go well beyond this. When brands build their storefront, they should consider how it:

     ✓ Aligns with their brand but remains unique from their competitors

     ✓ Is optimised to ensure that guests find navigation to be intuitive and easy

     ✓ Can be utilised across other digital platforms, to maintain brand consistency no matter where your customers are (ie. ordering from your website, your app, your kiosk in-store, etc)

Creating a storefront that checks all the boxes and ensures you achieve your best conversion rate is not always a task that can be taken on in-house. If you’re curious about your brand’s potential, we recommend seeking out an expert consultation. This will help you better understand how your storefront can work harder, so you don’t have to.

Create the omnichannel experience

Not to be confused with the multichannel experience. An omnichannel approach is when brands utilise multiple channels to connect with their audience, but ensures all channels present a consistent look and feel.

Basically, omnichannel ordering means you aren’t seeing or managing your channels in silos. They work together to create an overarching, enhanced customer experience, which can ultimately lead to an increase in orders, reduced risk of drop off and creates more repeat customers. If you’d like to know more about omnichannel versus multichannel, check out our blog on this topic for more insight.

Reach an all-time high AOV through loyalty and upsell

Once you feel confident in your digital experience, whether that’s through online ordering or beyond, there’s plenty of ways to increase conversion and hike your average order values.

Guest retention is at the top of the priority list. Bringing in new customers is timely and expensive in comparison to maintaining or growing relationships with existing ones. But, many brands feel overwhelmed with loyalty, unsure where to start. In a recent survey where the majority of brands didn’t have a loyalty program in place (54%), all noted such programs would be as important, more important, or “critical to staying in business” after COVID. From stamp cards to loyalty integrations, there’s a number of ways brands can implement subtle changes to see big benefits.

Another option which brings massive gains for any brand is through AI enabled upsell and cross sell. Moving away from manual upsell, auto upsell takes the guesswork out of recommended pairings by relying on customer data and insights. The power of data driven upsell has been proven time and time again to increase average order value. Not only do your customers feel more connected to your brand, in some instances, it can increase revenues by up to 43%.

Amplifying your digital channels

Once you’re satisfied with your off-premise channel set-up, it’s time to put on your marketing hat and find ways to amplify them with your customer base. Look at how you can improve or start promoting your channels, through other channels.

If you’re struggling with amplification across channels, start with the priority channels and work your way up from there. A recent study showed 45% of consumers prefer email notifications on new marketing campaigns, discounts and promotional deals, while 30% choose Facebook, 15% Instagram and 4% Twitter.

To really ensure your brand is attracting and retaining customers and experiencing consistent growth year over year, we’d love to chat with you. We refer to ourselves as your partner in hospitality because relationships with our customers go way beyond implementing technology. Find out more here.