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!
Breaking away from the "pizza" discussion for a moment I'd like to comment on using the web to reach the traditional brick-and-mortar customer. By day, I work for a financial planning firm that specializes in retirement plans for the non-profit market.
About 22 months ago I was put in charge of the non-existent life insurance department (we sold LI before that but didn't really have a strong focus). 4 months after that I installed an online life insurance quote generator. It allowed our clients to easily get a life insurance quote without the burden of talking to someone. Once they filled out a quote, I got an email with their name, phone number, and email (provided it was real information).
The result? We sold more life insurance in the first month of the program than we did in the previous 12 months. When we made something easier for our client base it resulted in higher sales.
Hahahha this is too funny. When I was a freshman doing electrical engineering at UCSB I made I project very similar to this. This project was inspired by my first job...making pizzas at domino's (stupid jerk off boss). It went like this:
1) You go online and you tell the computer what ingredients you want (just like papa Johns)
2) Then the order info would get transfered to this giant automatic pizza making machine. The machine would make the pizza all on its own without any sort of employee input.
3) Then when the pizza was done, a barcode would be pasted on it that would have all the pizza info and address and everything.
4) The driver would then use his handhelp PDA (pizza delivery assistant, hahahaha so nerdy) that had a local map and driving routes already drawn on the map.
I guess it would have worked...except for maybe the giant automatic pizza making machine...the world isnt quite ready for that beast to be inegrated into the pizza delivery business quite yet.
I should go pattent that machine already...SARAH!!
ps. this was back in spring 2003 so it was a bit more novel than that it sounds now.
edited for spelling and non-sensicallness
Question is: did you order pizza at the end of all that?! or just make Rebecca, Danny and all your staff look at pictures of pizza all day....
'Cos that'd be harsh!
Surely you clicked "order pizza" at the end...
Thumbing because they're a locally-founded business, and I have to support the good stuff going on in The Ville.
And speaking as a consumer of mass quantities of pizza, I can say that the Papa basically owns our family's pizza consumption thanks to their online ordering functionality. I can't remember the last time we actually called in an order. Mainly because when you've got kids, it seems like while you're on the phone with the pizza guy is ALWAYS when they NEED to vie for your total, undivided attention. Mostly by yelling at you. Which makes phone ordering a PAIN.
Would AJAX be nice? Sure--but how many times have you tried to order a pizza with "half one set of toppings, half another set" and had them get it right over the phone?
I like your example with Pizza. It shows how things from offline (ordering process) can be moved to the online world. I am waiting for the next step. Where an online world changes how Pizza is prepared offline - new recipes and ingredients suggested by online visitors (this example is not the best). Seth Godin once wrote about flights. We can buy tickets online but what if visitors could propose their new routes and locations and it would have an impact on the offline world?
To be honest I am not impressed with the online purchasing process from papa johns. The usability to me sucks and could be improved.
I would love to see some cool ajax widgety build your own pizza ordering system.
How sick would it be if you could just drop and drag your toppings on to your pizza? I mean you first eat with your eyes!
I think a system like this would create a lot of social buzz.
No argument here. And yet, they still managed to sell $1 billion worth of pizza over the web - not too shabby.
Calorie counted food like - ediets.com is another business which has extremely high revenue potential on web. I consider it a brighter bulb than pizza industry.
yeah the best part would be the updating of the pizza as you went along...omg you could make such a tasty looking pizza...Im getting hungry :)
Web is like a 24x7 customer service personal completely dedicate to each customer. You need to have one and see what all fit in there for following reasons:
regards
- AjiNIMC aka webkotler
"but you're not really losting anything over the old pick-up-the-phone method, so it's forgiveable."
losting isn't a word Rand ;)
I can't wait for this sort of thing to become common, living in a not so popular part of the UK, this is the closest I'm getting to online pizza :(
Little known pizza fact #1
Domino's deliver to grid references - on certain large military training areas you can actually get Domino's (and other local pizza companies) to deliver your pizza to a grid reference....
:0 Dominos won't deliver to me when I ring them as I'm 'too far away' (2 miles outside their radius) and all other local places don't have a website.
Will be trying their website tonight though :D
What the article doesn't say however is if this growth is new customers or customers moving from offline to online ordering. Howver even if it's not bringing in new customers the cost savings from online ordering could well justify the process.