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How restaurants can improve web order forms

The Fullstory Team
Posted July 16, 2021
How restaurants can improve web order forms

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, online ordering capabilities for restaurants went from novel nice-to-have to business-critical necessity practically overnight.

While the mom-and-pop deli around the corner had to leap the same technological hurdle—establishing a usable, trustworthy online ordering system—as large chain franchise restaurants, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) had to make that system work effortlessly across hundreds of different locations and franchisees. 

Essentially, the base expectations for a QSR just bumped up a level in the past year: great food plus an optimized online experience. Quite a bit to manage.

According to Fast Casual, in 2020, online restaurant ordering hit record heights and hasn’t yet reached the summit:

  • Restaurant delivery orders grew a staggering 124% between March 2020 and March 2021.

  • Digital orders for carry-out, which represented 62% of all digital orders, increased by 130%.

  • Digital orders for delivery grew by 140%, holding 38% share of total restaurant digital orders.

  • Restaurant apps and websites were the most-used channels for digital ordering, representing 62% of all digital orders.

No matter the food, all those orders have one thing in common: each must pass the restaurant’s order form.

Why restaurant order forms are critical

The online ordering form is the last hurdle between food in your customer’s hands and money on your bottom line. And, especially for large QSRs, it’s as much as a representation of your brand as the people making the food or taking orders—there’s no aspect of the process that should be left to chance.

fs-consumer-survey-after an error 77%

Why? It’s the place where orders get abandoned. According to FullStory’s survey, 77% of US consumers will leave a site after encountering even a single error in their digital experience. 

One difficult form can prompt a visitor to go somewhere else entirely. Goodbye burritos, hello pizza.

Find out what leading digital experience teams do differently—and how your organization can replicate their success. Download The State of Digital Experience Report.

Two ways to reduce restaurant form abandonment

Ultimately, reducing form abandonment comes down to two elements:

1. Quantitative understanding

Numbers make the world go ‘round, and QSRs are no different. Whether it’s the final sales tally for the day or the operating costs listed in your quarterly financial reports, having reliable, quantitative metrics creates a solid baseline for change. After all, the first step to making change is knowing that change needs to happen in the first place.

To reduce restaurant form abandonment, a good place to start is an understanding of how many visitors attempt to order compared to how many actually make it through.

For more exacting insight, however, modern digital experience intelligence tools can shine light on the thousands of UX decisions that compose a modern website or app.

2. Qualitative understanding

The quantitative data analytics that surround your restaurant can be insightful, but still requires that you know what you want to measure, what questions you want to answer, and the path you think users will take.

By diving into the why behind those quantitative metrics, you’ll unearth rationale behind the metrics. For instance, a quantitative approach may help you learn that people are dropping off your order form when inputting pizza toppings. But without qualitative insights through digital intelligence like session replay, you’d never understand why, for instance, customers were Rage Clicking on pepperoni.

Better Empathy, Less Form Abandonment

Essentially, reducing form abandonment is an exercise in empathy. You need to understand what’s driving your users to give up and abandon your form. To do that, you need clarity into their needs and expectations. And for that, you need to be empathetic.

With the FullStory digital experience intelligence platform, QSRs can harness that empathy and adapt their practices at lightning speed to meet consumers’ changing needs and find the signal through the noise.

See how FullStory works for your organization.

Request a demo.

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The Fullstory TeamContributor

About the author

Our team of data and user experience experts share tips and best practices.

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