Promoting Your Store
Once you have set up your online store settings and menus, you are ready to start taking orders. Getting online orders requires you to drive customers to your website to place orders.
Promoting your store goes well beyond the scope of our software. This single page does not do justice to the vast number of promotion strategies available. The below suggestions are here to help you get started.
Let Your Customers Know
Initially, your customers will not be aware of your new online ordering system. It's important that you let them know this exists. You can do this by:
Handing out cards or flyers when customers make in-store purchases
Putting up a board or sign on your store window
Inform customers who call in that they can now order online.
Add a link from your website to your ordering page
Posting the ordering link on your social media channels
Add the ordering link to your in-store receipts
Paid Advertising
You can consider paying for Facebook or Google ads. Both of these are ways to create new customers. We strongly recommend utilizing Facebook advertising as it is dirt cheap and easy to target local consumers with.
Create A Google Places Listing
A Google places listing will allow local customers to find you far easier as its focused on your locality. This means you are more likely to rank high if the person searching for you is near your store. Follow this link https://www.google.com.au/business/ to create or manage your listing.
Do not forget to add a "Placing an order" link to your places listing. See the following article on how this can be done https://support.google.com/business/answer/6218037?hl=en
Search Engine Optimization
SEO which stands for search engine optimization is the process of making your site discoverable and rank high on search engines such as Google.
Setup A Custom Domain Name
By default, your online store can be found on a sub-domain of "cloudwaitress.com. It is essential that you set this subdomain to be something that customers can easily remember and recognize.
While the subdomain is just there to get you up and running quickly, it's best to purchase your own domain name for your business. You can then configure your store to your own custom domain name.
Once you have purchased your own domain name, visit "Settings > Website > Domains > Custom Domain" in your restaurant dashboard to configure it.
Basic SEO Settings
Under the "Settings > Website > SEO" section, you can edit your website title and meta description. This is the info Google will show on its search listings. It is recommended that you set these to something extremely local.
Say you own an Indian restaurant called the Red Turban in a suburb called Townsville in New York. Your title should be "Red Turban - Authentic Indian Townsville New York.
Your meta description should just expand on that more but make sure to hit on your keywords which are your locality and cuisine. The reason for this is because locality will reduce the massive competition and noise of other websites on search engines and it is most likely what customers will be searching for in your local area.
Submit Your Website To Google, Bing etc
Once you have a custom domain, visit https://search.google.com/search-console. Register an account there, add your website, then use the "URL Inspection Tool" to check your website. There you can submit it to Google for indexing.
Additional Reading
We have created a few helpful guides for restaurant marketing on our blog. We suggest reading them to get more ideas and strategies.
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