In the words of Seth Godin,

Today I received an email from a stranger on LinkedIn, and I have attached the screenshot above. You could see that he is promising me to do something which I would benefit from. But as always I simply deleted this email and move forward.

Sometimes, it's critical to keep asking some basic questions over and over, and reiterate on the core values and why we exist as a company. For a start, this gives so much clarity and focus for me as an individual and also to the company as a team.

Needless to say there are a tonne of online ordering solutions out there. So the key question is how do you really decide which one to choose.

In this post I will give you five things to consider before you really invest on an online ordering system.

#1: Order delivery:

The first thing to look out for in any online ordering system is to check how the actual order is delivered to the restaurant. Most online ordering providers give you the option of delivering the order via email, sometimes they even offered to call you over the phone to inform the order.

One of the most common mistakes founders do when they initially start a company is that, they place a very little value on their time.

One of the most frequently asked questions by restaurant owners is, “Will people actually download my mobile app?”

One of the key components of online ordering systems is payments and we all know that most people like to pay by card but no one likes to give their card number.

If you look at real world, most people use their card to make payments for their meal or for any purchases for that matter, in fact we don’t even think about it, all we do is we grab the wallet, pull out the card and tap. Here you go!

The key takeaway from this experience is that while we are paying by card, the card number is not shared. At least not in the way it’s being typed out online on a 3rd party website.

On top of it, most often we also have to give a CVV number, for the payment to be processed.

While this would work for big players like Amazon or Google, for small restaurants or cafes, it’s quite difficult to expect the customers to give their card numbers. But I wouldn’t say that it is not happening, but all I’m saying is that if there’s a better way then it has to be prioritised.

After the launch of Apple Pay and Google pay, it has opened up new possibilities in terms of online payments.

Because given the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones, and the fact that it is being dominated by Apple and Google, Apple Pay and Google pay are becoming more and more prevalent, and it comes with real advantages for online commerce.

The key advantage of mobile payments is the fact that you could make an online payment without really sharing your card details.

This is so much convenient and it is much more secure, because at the end of the day you are not really sharing your card inInformation to a third party, and this is what PayPal set out to do and did bridge the gap for quite a few years. But now you have the same benefits without really logging into a different platform just for the sake of it.

So the bottom line is the fact that any new online ordering experience should definitely include Apple Pay and Google pay right off the bat, because that is the future of payments and online ordering solutions providers should embrace it.

Restoplus is a technology company at heart, and as you might have guessed we are already supporting Apple Pay and Google pay on our website ordering solution for restaurants. Check out the live demo, it’s really cool.

With our latest release, we updated the payment settings for the restaurant to be much more sophisticated than what it used to be.