Doing Business Online

Doing Business Online

Restaurants, cafes and other food retailers have been taken their business online since they were first asked to close their dining rooms in the spring last year.

There are lots of different online tools to choose from. From the well-known existing services that will charge a commission such as JustEat, HungryHouse,  etc through to free site builders with online ordering that is done by the business themselves.

Here are a few website and app builders that could be considered for such food businesses wishing to offer online ordering and taking payments:

https://www.foodit.com/

https://www.flipdish.com/gb/

https://www.qikorders.co.uk/

https://orderyoyo.com

… and many more!

There may be a service specific to your area that you can join that’s got a ready-made audience. For example, in Halifax we have one called https://www.deliveree.co/ with many local eateries on there.

Some are free, some take commissions, some may have a licence fee either monthly or annually.

Most of these services have a UK support team to help with the set up, but if this sort of thing scares you and you’d rather focus on the food – digital agencies and web companies in your area will be able to help you with the most complex elements for standard hourly rates (which may be a sensible use of your time/money at this time).

Away from the food industry, if you are simply looking to take your business online there are main other options to help you get there.  Whether it’s a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, or increased social media activity on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. for you to keep your customers up-to-date with the latest news, or if you looking to create an online store using Shopify or WooCommerce, for example, there are tools out there to help you get through these times.

Good luck to all of the small businesses out there and, if you want to discuss any of the above with Digital Consortium, of course we’d be happy to help.