By: Chris Barr
Do you own a pizza restaurant? Are you trying to increase sales while reducing the “busy work” involved with each order? Good news…you can! The key is to offer online ordering. When customers can log on to your website, create their own orders, and pay with the click of their mouse, everybody wins. You generate more revenue without the phone calls and hassle, and your customer has a convenient and preferred method of ordering your pizza. Plus you obtain all of their contact information to generate repeat business later down the road!
Once you have a website with online ordering, you will need to generate as much website traffic as possible and convert as many visitors into sales as possible. To generate more pizza sales on your website, consider flyer printing and direct mail advertising. Pizza menus, menu mailers, and flyers are the absolute best way to advertise your restaurant and increase website traffic. However, there are a few things you will want to do in order to make sure that your flyer is successful at increasing those web sales.
Design a colorful flyer and think about including great pictures on it that capture people’s attention and make them drool while reading the flyer. Consider offering a discount code (only redeemable online) allows customers to save money by ordering on your website. This will help persuade them to register on your site and make a purchase from it (while learning and being trained to use the website in the future). The code should be in a bold font and it must be crystal clear what they will receive by using that code online. I suggest the following type of offer: “Order Online! Buy One Large Pizza, Get One Free! Limited Time Only.” Obviously, you can customize the offer to meet your business needs.
It is a good idea to give your pizza menu printing a similar look to your website. Believe it or not, this will also help to increase your sales. People will automatically know that they have arrived at the right website and they will also feel more comfortable with the site if it feels almost as if they have been there before. The flyer should also fill them in a about what the website has to offer. If you have a menu that you can abbreviate on your flyers and mailers, this may be helpful as well.
The bottom line: Use pizza menus with “online only” offers to generate web traffic. If your large pizza normally cost $14.99, offer it to customer for $10.99 online (or similar). Your website can be used to increase sales, develop a customer mailing list (addresses and emails), and spread the word about your pizza restaurant and great service.
Direct mail is the key to your online and web sales success. Look at “The Big 3 Chains” and learn from their advertising even if your food quality is much higher.