Online ordering has grown from 10% pre-pandemic to 27% throughout 2023, according to a new report from Paytronix.
So retailers should not just offer online ordering—they should perfect it, the company said in the 2024 Paytronix Online Ordering Report.
They should understand where the convenience store is losing customers during the online ordering process by analyzing the data that shows how they interact with the website or mobile app.
How many people put something in their cart? How many viewed the checkout page? And, finally, how many went through with the purchase?
That number is likely to get smaller and smaller, with not everyone making it all the way through the funnel. Retailers need to find out where exactly those customers drop off.
Retailers should consider the following questions to enhance the mobile app’s success rate for online ordering.
- Mobile: Is a poor mobile ordering experience turning guests away?
- Menu: Would menu engineering encourage the sale of more profitable items?
- Recommendations: Would a recommendation engine based on past ordering behavior encourage larger orders?
- Guest sentiment: Would feedback surveys give you greater insights into problems at the store level—and more chances to win guests back?
- Loyalty: Would integrating a loyalty program into your first-party ordering platform create more guest stickiness? Research shows you can get a lift between 18% and 30%.
- Accessibility: Are you missing opportunities in broader communities by not offering multilingual ordering capabilities?
It’s important to consider integrating marketing with online ordering to drive online orders and implement the initiatives that provide the highest return, according to Paytronix.
Retailers should create campaigns (in-store, email, direct mail, social media, online advertising) that promote special offers for ordering online.
And the should add loyalty to encourage repeat business and collect data and simplify the process of ordering from a mobile device.
Data in the 2024 Paytronix Online Ordering Report is from 2023 and aggregated from a subset of Paytronix online ordering customers. For a store to be included, it must have been open throughout the whole of 2023. Data is rolled up to the merchant level before aggregation to avoid weighting large chains more heavily, Paytronix said.
Newton, Massachusetts-based Paytronix is a cloud-based digital guest engagement platform for the hospitality industry. Its platform provides loyalty programs, online ordering, gift cards, branded mobile applications and strategic insights on more than 1,800 leading restaurant and convenience-store brands.
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