Promoting a Restaurant Ordering Website: The First 90 Days

The ordering site is live. Somebody placed a test order, the kitchen saw it, and now there is a link and nothing happening. The next ninety days decide whether that link becomes a channel or a thing you forget about. This is a sequenced plan for those ninety days, written for an owner or manager with a few hours a week and no marketing budget. It assumes you already know the individual tactics from how to increase direct online orders; this article is about the order to do them in and what to measure.

The principle behind the sequence: fix the places people already look before trying to create new attention.

The three numbers, set up before week one

Open a spreadsheet with four columns: week, direct orders, repeat direct orders, total delivery and pickup orders across all channels. Fill it in every Monday. Everything below is judged against it.

• Direct orders come from your ordering site’s order list.
• Repeat direct orders are direct orders from a customer who has ordered direct before. The order screen shows the customer’s name and contact on each order, which is enough to count by hand at low volume.
• Direct share is direct orders divided by total orders across every channel, including marketplaces. This is the number that should rise.

You will not need anything more sophisticated for ninety days.

Weeks 1 and 2: The listing and the people who already know you

Nothing new goes out yet. The first two weeks are about making sure that anyone who looks for you by name finds the link.

Week 1

• Update your Google Business Profile: website field, order link, menu link. Remove or demote marketplace order links where the profile lets you.
• Put the link in the Instagram bio and create a three-frame “How to order” story highlight.
• Set the WhatsApp Business greeting and away message to include the link.
• Brief the staff. Two sentences they can say when a guest asks about delivery or a caller wants to order by phone.

Week 2

• Order packaging insert cards and table cards. Generate the code with the QR code generator and test it from three phones before the print run.
• Add the link to receipt footers, printed and emailed.
• Place a test order yourself from outside on mobile data, again. Things break between launch and week two more often than you would think.

What to expect: a handful of direct orders from regulars who find the link on Google. Low numbers are normal.

Weeks 3 to 6: Every order that leaves the building carries the link

Week 3

• Insert cards go in every bag, including marketplace orders where your agreement allows it.
• Table cards go on every table.
• Post the link on Instagram, once, with a plain photo of a dish that sells and one line: order direct, delivery and pickup.

Week 4

• Review the spreadsheet. If direct orders are not growing at all, the usual cause is the Google listing still sending people elsewhere. Check it again.
• Ask the five regulars you know by name whether they have used the link. Their answers will tell you what is confusing.

Weeks 5 and 6

• Decide whether to make direct pickup visibly cheaper. This is a pricing decision, not a marketing one: pickup orders cost you no rider and no commission, so there is room to pass some of that back. If you do it, say it on the card and the site in one line.
• Second Instagram post, different dish. Pin the first one.
• Add a line to the printed menu for dine-in guests: “We deliver. Order direct at [link].”

What to expect by week 6: direct orders should be a visible line on the weekly sheet, and a few names should be appearing twice.

Weeks 7 to 10: Turn first orders into second orders

Acquisition is working or it is not by now. These weeks are about repeat, which is where a direct channel earns its keep.

Week 7

• Look at the customer names on direct orders. Anyone who ordered once and not again in three weeks is the audience for this month.
• Prepare a short message for returning customers. How you send it depends on what you have permission for and what tools you use; a WhatsApp message to someone who ordered via WhatsApp is normal, an unsolicited message to someone who did not is not. Keep it to one line and the link.

Week 8

• Review whether the ordering experience is causing drop-off. Watch a friend or a staff member order on their own phone without help. Note every hesitation.
• Fix the menu descriptions or photos that caused hesitation. Use the menu builder so changes go live the same day.

Weeks 9 and 10

• Run one thing for direct customers only. A dish that is only on the direct menu, a free side on direct orders over a threshold, or earlier access to a weekend special. Pick one, say it once on Instagram and once on the insert card, and keep it going for a month.
• Mention the direct link in every reply to a Google review, good or bad: “Thank you, next time order direct at [link] and let us know how it goes.”

What to expect by week 10: the repeat column should be growing faster than the direct orders column. If it is not, read how to encourage repeat orders through direct channels before adding more acquisition.

Weeks 11 to 13: Decide what to keep

Week 11

• Calculate direct share for each of the last ten weeks and draw it on paper. A line going up, however slowly, is a channel. A flat line is a problem to diagnose, not a reason to spend money.

Week 12

• Put real numbers through the commission calculator: your actual direct orders per month, your actual average order value, and your marketplace rate. That is what the channel is worth so far, in money, with the formula shown.
• Decide whether the direct-only offer from week 9 continues. If repeat is up, it is probably paying for itself.

Week 13

• Write down the five things that produced orders and the five that did not. Drop the second list.
• Reorder insert cards if the first run is nearly gone. That alone tells you the volume has been real.

What the ninety days usually look like

Three honest patterns:

• Restaurants with regulars and a dine-in room typically see the direct line grow steadily from week 3, mostly from table cards and insert cards, with repeat following by week 8.
• Cloud kitchens with no walk-in trade find the first six weeks slow, because there is no table and no face-to-face moment. Insert cards and the Google listing do most of the work, and the direct-only offer in week 9 matters more.
• Anyone who skips weeks 1 and 2 spends the rest of the quarter wondering why the Instagram posts are not converting, when the Google listing is sending everyone to a marketplace.

Nothing here replaces marketplaces for reaching strangers. The plan moves the people who already know you to a channel that does not charge a percentage of their order and leaves their details with you. The direct ordering page covers why that difference compounds.

What to do next

Open the spreadsheet, fill in week zero from last week’s orders, and do the four week-one tasks before anything else. If you have not launched the site yet, the setup steps are in how to create an online ordering website for a restaurant, and the website itself starts from get started.