Yes, whiny title writer, you most certainly do. Check out this piece from the AP on PapaJohns.com:
The nation’s third-largest pizza delivery chain trumpeted the $1 billion milestone Wednesday, noting that its U.S. online sales have been growing at an average clip of more than 50 percent per year. In 2001, the chain’s online sales totaled $20.4 million. Last year, its online sales approached $400 million.
Papa John’s said more than 20 percent of its sales come from online or through text messaging, an option it introduced last year. The company said text sales are meeting expectations, but it didn’t provide specifics.
Freitas said online business is driving higher overall sales at his more than 50 Washington-area stores. Online orders account for about half of overall sales at a couple of his restaurants, he said.
“I knew it would be a big part of our business, but this has blown my expectations away, and I think it’s even going to go higher,” Freitas said.
While the demographics of pizza-delivery-addicts may skew slightly to the younger, online-obsessed population, this is a fairly good signal that even the most mainstream parts of the American consumer market are finding value in using the web. Why? In this particular instance, my answer would be “usability.”
Let’s walk through the standard, offline, phone-based process of ordering pizza:
- Make decisions about:
- Which restaurants can deliver to your location
- Pricing
- Quality
- Reliability and Timing
- Find a menu for the pizza place you want to order from OR call the pizza place and ask for a list of menu options and prices
- Put pizza restaurant on hold while you evaluate the choices and confer with the group placing the order
- Place the pizza order
- Provide credit card information for payment or choose cash at the door
- Hang up and wait for pizza
We’ve all done this for years, and to be honest, it’s not a hard process. In fact, it’s actually possible that the expression “as easy as ordering pizza” could exist.
But, just to be fair, let’s take a tour of that same process on the web (using visual examples from Papa John’s site):
The homepage is there to sell me on stuff, but it’s nice that they have a link to a whole page with all their specials – that’s always a struggle to understand properly over the phone and you sometimes wonder if you’re getting the best deal available.
Admittedly, it’s a nuisance to put in your address before you see the menu, but on the plus side, you can find out what menu is available (and whether delivery is available) in your area. I’m guessing they change the pricing a bit depending on region, but you’re not really losing anything over the old pick-up-the-phone method, so it’s forgivable.
Having the menu online is actually remarkably more convenient. Not only can Papa John’s upsell you on some of their specialty pizzas, you can actually peruse the entire menu at your leisure, along with prices and descriptions (and even photos) – something that would be nearly impossible offline.
This is where the online system really shines – the create-your-own-pizza form. This is the part that never gets done right over the phone, but with the web system, you can craft it exactly right and be sure that the pizza maker is seeing the order the way you want it. There’s still the possibility for human error, but it’s gone way, way down. Plus, it’s great to have your web order available so if you do get the wrong pizza, you can reject it, pay less, or get it for free.
Confirmation and checkout are pretty much exactly what you’d expect – the nice part is that you can review your choices, make changes, and get things right where you want them before sending in the order. This part of the phone conversation happens fast in the normal ordering process, and crafting selection to your exact budget and party size can be challenging.
Now I can hear you say – yeah, Rand, we get it. Ordering pizza online has a lot of benefits over calling up and ordering over the phone. And yes, lots of people are using this service. But what the heck does it have to do with SEO?
The short answer is that this is one of the clearest illustrations I’ve seen of a completely normal, easy offline process becoming even easier and better with help from the web. It’s also a phenomenal success story for the company that pioneered it. The big takeaway here is that no matter the offline process – from restaurant menus to contract approvals to renting office space or hiring a plumber – the web’s ability to create better usability makes for opportunity for businesses.
So, do you really need to build web access to your business processes? No. Only if you want to get more customers and make your existing ones happier. And hey, if pizza delivery chains can do it, you can too.
p.s. An adroit reader asked me, anonymously, last week for some ammunition in helping convince the brass that using the web for typically offline processes could have ROI – happy to oblige!
