In recent years, the food delivery industry has seen an enormous surge in popularity, with more and more people relying on apps to order their favourite meals straight to their door. However, with growing competition, it can be challenging for restaurants and food businesses to stand out from the crowd and attract new customers. In this four part blog series, we'll explore some key strategies to help your food delivery business stand out. From optimising placement and delivery times to leveraging reviews and high-quality imagery, we'll provide practical tips to help your business succeed in the increasingly competitive world of food delivery. So whether you're a small, independent restaurant or a larger chain, read on to discover how you can enhance your online presence and increase your visibility on food delivery apps.
In the Takealytics White Paper we talk about the Path to Purchase. When thinking about how to stand out from the crowd, start with this, understanding how consumers purchase from your restaurant online.
There are a number of steps the consumer goes through in making their decision on a specific restaurant. Ensuring that your brand is prominent in that decision process is key. The very start of that journey is the choice of platform.
Choosing the right platforms
Each aggregator has different coverage across the country and different demographics. Ensuring you are on the right platforms for your brand is the first hurdle in standing out from the crowd. Whilst an exclusive agreement with one aggregator may offer you benefits in better placement and commission rates, operating across all delivery platforms will broaden your reach.
Once you have decided on the aggregators that are right for you the next key area to consider is your placement.
Organic and Sponsored Placement
One of the biggest influences on sales is where your restaurant returns on the delivery platforms. Too many scrolls and you will lose out on sales, so, how do you move up the aggregators rankings?
The way each platform's placement algorithm works varies but there are some common areas which will significantly help your placement:
Delivery Time - Platforms reward restaurants which can deliver quickly. We talk more about delivery time in our next blog but keeping delivery time continuously down will pay dividends in optimising your organic placement.
Reviews - Your average review score. Delivering a good customer experience and getting positive feedback will help aid your position.
Promotions - Regularly promoted restaurants typically return higher in organic placement.
When you focus on improving these areas, you can significantly enhance your restaurant's organic placement. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of your restaurant being featured in specific carousels at the top of the page, such as "Top Picks" or "Quick Delivery" featured sections.
Takealytics Placement analysis gives you visibility of this data across your estate. See which of your locations are placing lower on the aggregators and benchmark this against your nearby competitors.
Easily overlay this data against your average delivery time, reviews and promotions to understand the causes of your organic position and which areas you should work on to optimise your performance.
Takealytics Placement Analysis tracks where your restaurants return organically and any promoted content or carousels seen for your brand.
Whilst optimising your organic performance will pay dividends in increased revenue in the long term - optimising your organic performance takes time and persistent effort. If you want to increase sales quickly in those locations where you have poor organic placement consider paying for sponsorship or placement on “featured” carousels. Whilst this costs this will bring you to the top of the page instantly.
Using Takealytics you can gain a clear understanding of where to strategically allocate your featured or sponsored spend to maximise your return on investment. By identifying locations where your organic placement is poor, Takealytics helps you make informed decisions on where to focus your sponsored efforts. Additionally, our platform allows you to monitor whether the aggregators have effectively promoted your brand as agreed, and provides insights into how your placement compares to others on the “featured” carousel.
Securing a spot within the top four carousel positions on platforms like Deliveroo is crucial for ensuring your brand's prominent visibility at the forefront of the app. With Takealytics data, clients can effectively monitor and optimise their featured spend to achieve this objective. By analysing daily changes in spend, businesses can gauge the impact on their placement and uncover opportunities to potentially reduce spending while still maintaining a top position on the app.
The above Takealytics Placement Analysis shows organic and featured availability. This is a great example of where a brand is paying for featured placement for locations where their brand is not returning high in the organic results.
We hope you enjoyed part one of our blog on how to stand out on the food delivery apps. To find out more including delivery times to leveraging reviews and delivering high-quality imagery click through to part two.