Living in an era of digitization has its own perks. As for today, there are applications that enable us to find the closest restaurants or clinics, apps that gauge our health and online shopping apps are now available. In these times, restaurant owners understand the need and the value of having a dedicated restaurant mobile app to run their business in a much grander and larger scale. It is no more a luxury or a flavor of the elite, it is become a necessity. Through a restaurant mobile app, it is possible to inform the gusts about any special events, or any special food festival that the restaurant maybe conducting, about new items on the menu or about any branch that the restaurant may have opened.
But, what are the key features or the main points that one must include while making an app, to gauge customers, retain old ones and boost the revenue and sales of the restaurant? Here are the essential features that one must add in the restaurant app:
- Accessible to Multiple Platforms: While you make the app, it is most important that it reaches to majority of the customers. It should be one of the key focus areas for any app developer. This is possible only if the food app is made accessible to all the platforms like Google Play and App Store. Customer’s maybe Apple or Android users. Hence, making the app available to one and all is important. Not only will be accessible to all, it will also create awareness among a larger section of people which inturn will help you get noticed more, leading to prospect customers to download the app.
- Payment Gateway: Inorder to ensure smooth running of the app, it is essential to give the customers direct payment through the app option, inorder to make it easy for them to not only go through the menu or order, but also make a payment, as and when needed. Payment on delivery option, Credit Card, Debit Card options should be given to the customers. Moreover, the recently developed PayTM option also should be given to the customers. The online payment facility is vastly in use by most of the app holders and developers, and one wouldn’t want to be backward in this zone.
- Engage in Customer Referral Programs: This is another effective method of engaging the audience and the customer base towards the food app. The food app must have the option to invite friends. In this process, the customer who invites other friends, get bonus points if the friends accept the invite and install the application. The first time users are also bound to get some kind of discount under this referral program. It is basically a strategy of increasing the base of customers on the app, leading to more number of downloads and large customer base online.
- Connect to them on Social media too: If you want to make your customer base strong and build a rapport with them, it is advisable to not be hideous and connect to them on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. By doing so, one can make pages, share some feedback from a customer, upload pictures of the tempting delicacies and update about the special days, special events, etc. that are going to be held at the restaurant or a special discount that the customers will get by booking online through the app.
To increase sales of the restaurant business, developing a food app of the restaurant is a very good idea. One can achieve more success and more fame with the help of the food app as it will promote ones restaurant and enable extra sales by taking orders online other than the restaurant itself.
