Improving SEO on Delivery Apps
There are several ways to improve SEO on delivery apps.
What is a delivery app? It’s 3rd Parties who deliver your food - like DoorDash and UberEats.
What’s SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. On 3rd Party delivery apps this basically means how far up you are on the search results. If you’re on the first or second page that’s usually great! If your company is AFTER those pages, it can be more challenging. The higher you are on the list, the more visibility you get. Think of it like “location, location, location”.
How do you increase your visibility on those apps? Here are a couple of ways:
DO NOT DISABLE YOUR TABLET.
Delivery Service Partners want to provide the highest quality restaurant partners to their customers. If your team is disabling your tablets on a regular basis then you are considered an unreliable partner. If you’re unreliable, people don’t want to do business with you.
Instead, consider making different adjustments. Why is your tablet getting disabled? Are you busy or are your hours wrong on their site?
If you’re getting busy, adjust the orders you can take per hour so you don’t get slammed. If they’re integrated to your POS or Olo you may need to adjust volume in the POS or use Olo’s Lead Time Extension Tool.
If your hours are not correct on the site, go in and fix them. If you only want to have drivers in your building until close, adjust your hours to close on 3rd Party Delivery Services 30 - 45 minutes before close.
GIVE DRIVERS THE 5-STAR EXPERIENCE.
Drivers rate your restaurant. Just like you can rate them. I realize that some drivers can be… challenging. You will always have drivers who show up 10 minutes early or demand their order right away. This is where your best customer service team member can come in clutch.
Set an expectation. “Sorry for the wait, [Customer Name]’s food will be up in XX minutes.”
Off them a fountain beverage while they wait.
Set the tone when they walk in. If your team members treat them like their favorite Guest, they’ll be excited to come to your restaurant. “Hey DoorDash Dude! How’s it going today? Are you here for [So-and-so]’s order?” <— This one will do double-duty. Drivers can cancel orders. If a driver had a less than pleasant experience in your restaurant and they don’t want to go there, they won’t.
I realize how hard this is. Sometimes drivers come in hot. Sometimes they’re going to be difficult and there’s nothing you can do. Do everything you can to delight drivers. If your team builds a reputation for being awesome, then those few drivers won’t matter. If morale is low, start a competition to see who you can “catch” giving the best greeting to delivery drivers.
MAKE SURE YOUR RESTAURANT LOOKS OPEN.
This goes along with being a reliable restaurant. When I was on the restaurant side we had drivers who would report restaurants closed. They needed to provide pictures to show that our restaurants were closed. Sometimes, they weren’t wrong. I drove by one of our restaurants a few hours before close on an errand and they’d forgotten to turn on the outside lights. I texted the AD to ask if they’d closed and when I drove by again, it was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Some businesses close their dining room and have different instructions for drivers later in the day (going through the Drive Thru after-hours, for example). Make sure they can read whatever instructions you have from their car, post parking lot signs, or make sure that the 3rd Party Delivery company has those instructions in their driver notes (your CSM can help with that). This is a risk and not always successful, so you might need to do some A/B testing.
PARTAKE IN PROMOS.
3rd Party Delivery companies have a few ways to market with them. Some have tools that either you or your CSM can build promotions. There are also seasonal promotions that your CSM will likely bring up. When you market or promote on these 3rd parties you can be put in carousels. Those are at the top of the pages when you log on. If you go to their websites now, you can see those promotions.
VERIFY YOUR KEYWORDS.
Keywords on 3rd Party Apps are sometimes based on what you sell most of. While your goal of upselling to include garlic bread on orders may be gang-busters, you might not want your Italian restaurant known for Garlic Bread as one of your restaurant keywords. Work with your CSM and your internal Marketing team to come up with a handful of keywords that you think would be most useful.
TEST YOUR RESTAURANT.
Have someone on your team test your restaurant on each 3rd Party app periodically. Even if you integrate via Olo or Chowly, the 3rd party delivery companies’ integration might not be 100%. Each 3rd party has their own unique integration that they built.
If there’s a weird integration issue or some POS build that doesn’t jive with the 3rd paties, you can lose sales and not even realize it. That can lead to you being considered an unreliable restaurant because you’re getting failed or cancelled orders.
Make sure all of your items look good and place a test order for the most complex menu items. Don’t mark the item as a test - some drivers will cancel them. DO ask your restaurant to give that item to the driver free of charge as a thank you for helping you with your test. (This will also create some goodwill with those drivers.)
DAY PARTS.
Be careful of day-parting. Some 3rd Party sites don’t handle them very well - especially if they’re coming in via an aggregator. Label your hours on your breakfast or lunch categories so people know when they can order. This can also lead to failed orders and frustrated Guests.
There isn’t much competition for breakfast so I think it’s worthwhile to add it on 3rd Party sites. Lunch is a trade-down so it might be more profitable to remove this altogether. It may require A/B testing for your particular concept though.
FOLLOWING 3RD PARTY RECOMMENDATIONS.
Lately 3rd parties have been threatening to deprioritize brands who aren’t following their recommendations. Pickup pricing parity (pickup on their website the same price as dine-in) has been hot lately. Some POS and aggregators can’t handle that pricing. Also, it might not be economically feasible. Consider this point carefully before you move forward.
I realize that there’s a love/hate relationships with 3rd parties. The best way to think about them is as a marketing stream. This is a different way for you to acquire new customers. Each 3rd Party Delivery company is a different refrigerator. People have their own specific refrigerator that they open to see what’s for dinner. If you’re not on that platform, you’re not in that refrigerator and you will miss out on those Guests. Be strategic about which refrigerators you want to be in. Make sure the hassle is worth the income. And ALWAYS ALWAYS make sure you’re making money. If you’re not making money, please re-evaluate your strategy.