We live at the age of modern technologies, and applications penetrate into all spheres of human life, which make it easier and more comfortable. The ability of food ordering isn’t an exception. People spend much time while ordering food, and application aims to minimize this process, then gives a customer an opportunity to do other important activities.
You own the restaurant, cafe or bar, but you feel you can give more – so then it’s time to expand the horizons of your business. In this article we will try to consider a few reasons why it is necessary to build a custom food ordering app for restaurant, and the general tips that will help to develop best food ordering app ever.
Why is Ordering Mobile app must-have?
Food ordering mobile app is the ideal helper in finding new clients and increasing orders. Simply imagine that you can have eighty visitors at the restaurant, but 300 orders or even more. And app can really deal with that.
So, you get a new employee that works 24/7, brings you new customers every day and never take a leave. Isn’t that impressive? These are the general reasons why restaurateurs and startups nowadays look for the possibilities to create a mobile app for restaurant ordering that is able to boost industry and make high returns to the restaurant app developers – because it can.
Who will use food ordering app?
Let us start with the general idea of this type of applications and its clients. The target audience of food ordering mobile app are students, employees, and entrepreneurs. Their lifestyle demands to act quickly and do not waste time on things they don’t want to, plus to get everything of a high quality. That’s the reason for the eating habits have to be in tune with the way of life.
And if we don’t have enough time to go to the restaurant, it isn’t the reason to refuse to eat what we like. A key to this solution is to keep everything at hand. That’s what app should give – full access to the offers of the user’s favorite restaurant.
One more thing to keep in mind while developing a food ordering app is people motivation. And it is laziness as well as hunger. So when a customer opens an app, he or she wants to see an easy food guide with the main buttons and the modern design. Make it simple for your customers to place an order directly from their smartphone.
What should Food Ordering Mobile app contain to be user-friendly?
Here are the key features food ordering app for restaurant should provide to the customers:
Menu page – show your virtual visitors the meals you can suggest. It could be pictures of dishes or just titles with the description. Choose the variant you like the most.
Food Constructor icon – give your customers a chance to choose the right ingredients and order the meal they’ve just invented. But don’t think it would overload your staff – make this opportunity for easy meal positions only, such as pizza, hamburger, sushi rolls, pasta, or fresh juice.
Why it is important to place this feature into your app? Take the needs of your clients in the first place. Not everyone who likes mushroom pizza will like pineapple sticks on it. So take it into account too. With this feature you’ll get praise from your clients and profit for sure.
“Hot” (quick) order – the list of dishes which do not demand much time in preparation – for extremely hungry or super-busy persons.
Healthy menu page – healthy lifestyle is put in a high priority, so make it easy for your visitors to eat the right food: “Healthy menu” icon may contain meals which are recommended by dietitians.
Veggie menu page is the blessings to vegetarians and your success.
When the meal’s already tapped, suggest your customer to tell you what Changes he or she needs. Eating habits are important for everyone, so don’t lose the chance to be helpful for your clients. Give them an opportunity to correct the order according to their tastes – “Changes” icon is the next point in your app.
Remember, that food ordering mobile app could easily solve your business tasks, but it is not as primitive as one could imagine – it’s not just the list of dishes. Menu by itself is important, but it’s not the only point, which is worth customers’ attention. And app development include different processes that should be considered too.
Additional Services
In order to make really demandable food ordering mobile application, place additional services there that will simplify app usage:
- Live Order. It is the possibility of monitoring the order ensures customers that they’ll get their meal on time.
- Push notifications and Event Calendar will help users to know about up-to-date offers, local events.
- Multiple Payment methods. Customers can choose any type of payment according to their needs: credit card, PayPal, etc.
- Testimonials. Allow your client to leave testimonial after order is complete. For restaurants owners it is one of the key features because it shows how effectively their service works. Also, it is an opportunity to analyze market positions and understand what clients want and expect to get.
- One more feature that will definitely increase loyalty of your customers is client care system. “Eat more, pay less” – well, this is what people want. So give them that. Give your regular clients coupons, free birthday offers, special deals. All this will keep app at the top of mobile app charts for a long time.
Further mobile app development for restaurants is impossible without restaurant’s and customers’ interaction, so put feedback, testimonials, rate, like/dislike buttons on a platform. Also think of idea to send “Quiz” in an hour after the meal was delivered – show your “visitors” it’s important for you to know how they found the meal they had got.
Start Food Ordering App Development Wisely
Don’t forget to to devise a plan of the whole process at the very beginning of the app development. Luckily we did it for you. In order to succeed next steps are required to be done:
- Analyze and take into account all market requirements. It will help you to define direction worth to move.
- Choose platform you will run your app on. We recommend you to start with one, because it’s easier for the beginning, nevertheless it’s possible to cover several directions in the future. Consider the fact that building an app differs depending on a platform you’ve chosen. We recommend to begin with iOS or Androind platform.
- Weight the potential cost and risks. Note, that restaurant mobile app development cost depends on how serious you’re about being competitive. It needs eye-catching design of a high quality, tests and analysis of the specialists. It’s difficult to do everything by yourself, so we recommend to hire app developers that will help to develop your app or make it better.
- Build a technical project and create app prototype. In order to cover all possible food ordering app features draw up a technical project and build a mobile app prototype you can start to work with.
- Come up with a great design. Create a simple and intuitive interface for your food ordering app. Be sure not to put a lot of useless forms and text lines that will only clutter the screen up.
- Proceed with further adjustments and app testings.
- Run MVP – minimum viable product. It will help you to understand the weak and strong points of app beforehand.
- Do more testings.
- Run the final version of the app on App Store (or Google Play).
Here it is. By following this simple blueprint you can’t go wrong.
Summary
Today we’ve tried to answer the question “Why it is necessary to develop a food ordering app” and tried to give you the main idea and tips on how to build mobile app for restaurant.
If you have any questions regarding this topic or want to make a mobile app for restaurant, please feel free to contact us anytime. We provide different business niches with profitable IT-solutions. Entrust our dedicated team of developers to create the app, which can meet both your business needs and your customers’ wishes.