Kinda special, first ever post eh

[CBrown]

Well, here we go. First a tip of the hat to Revention for being so commited to customer input. I have a very small takeout/delivery store in a small Canadian town. By small I mean we did $150,000 last year.(2006) We changed from the old pen and paper to our Revention system in June 2007 and are now averaging $20,000+ a month! Can not wait to get this on-line thing up and running. What do you guys think of the demo? All my staff really like the look of it but all had the same question... What if they select "Build your own" pizza and then go"No,No I want a Hawaiin"? In other words, how do they cancel and back up? Everybody also felt that not enough time given to fill in name address etc before the "are you still there" prompt.( Some of us can only "two finger" type!) . Cassandra tells me that initially the on line database will be seperate from the stores. I think that the merging of the two should be of the highest priority. Also think that the ability for the customer to place a defered order would be nice.
Check out these two links... The first is everything we would want to avoid. The second is (in my opinion) a very well done site. (Really like the Closed sign and count down to opening time).



[URL="http://briantannerresearch.blogspot.com/2007/05/dont-order-pizza-online-from-pizza-hut.html"]


[URL="https://www.pizza73.com/order.html"]


I have no hard numbers to back this up, that said, my guess is that I will see a switch of approx 10% of my existing customers to the online system that will be matched with a further 10% increase from new customers. Net result is I am anticipating a 10% gain right out of the gate and growth from there. I will keep stats and let you know.

Clive,
Pizzability Sooke

[TWard]

I'm the IT director for a Pizza chain down in Dallas, and we have been discussing this for a while.

You make a good point about the database needing to be the same, as now we are building our 5th store, and trying to keep the menu's the same between all the stores and having the online ordering on the same database as well as all our locations would be ideal. With the 6th location on its way already once the 5th is open it will just make things even more complicated without a central shared menu database. They are looking into implementing this though, or so I have been told.

We got a hold of some interesting information about the online ordering though, a local Buffalo Wings chain added online ordering, and although they say their in-store revenue drop slightly, the number of online orders averages 80% more in average ticket cost than the in store orders. Netting a total increase in sales overall. It should help a bit with labor as well, since The online ordering system essentially works as an employee just taking phone orders. As more people become familiar with the system you might even see a larger increase in total ticket averages and sales.

[justin.long_1987]

I am a little worried about the ability or lack of support for Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers. As a web administrator over 85% of my demographics use one of those 3 browsers and only 12% use IE6 or IE7. I know this demographic is flipped from most of the country but it worries me because cross platform combatabilty is so easy to achieve

[CBrown]

Spoke with Cassandra yesterday. She tells me that they are waiting until a large amount of updates/ upgrades are made to system before making compatible with other browsers. I am not promoting my online ordering until it has been GREATLY improved in the user friendly department. Basic functionality is now almost there. We are getting some orders online now. Can not wait till I feel good enough about site so we can promote it. Clive.

[CBrown]

Well we seem to be making progress. Our online site is still nothing like a polished, pro site, however, it is at least usable?? There have been great improvements made in the last couple of weeks. I am about to start a print promo pushing the site and will advise on results.
pizzability.ca