Maximize profits on Zomato & Foodpanda

In today’s day & age, no restaurant can run without online ordering. No restaurant. The biggest brands like Dominos and Mcdonalds have partnered with Zomato, Swiggy, and Foodpanda. Most delivery restaurants get 50% to 75% of their orders through these channels. But what’s also happening is that discounts + commissions are eating into profit margins. Depending on how you look at it, you’d think that these platforms are good or bad; good for sales, bad for reducing profit margins. I believe a restaurant should look at Zomato & Foodpanda as partners. At Xeno, we’ve worked with 100s of restaurants, understood their pain points & built a solution to help you, a restaurant owner better understand your online ordering channels, and maximize profit through them. Let’s look at the problem statements:

1. Am I getting new customers from Zomato? Or are my existing customers ordering?
2. Do customers return after ordering from Foodpanda?
3. Do I get more orders if I run a discount on Zomato or do my existing customers shift?
4. Once a customer orders from Foodpanda, do they order from my website?
5. I ran an ad on Zomato. Did it deliver results?

Today, I’m going to answer these questions for you. The solutions might have more answers to more questions in your head that I’ve missed listing down. If they don’t, email us at support@xeno.in

Am I getting new customers from Zomato?

Or are my existing customers orderingJust look at a simple new vs. repeat split of orders from Zomato but across your whole business. I mean, if a customer has ordered for the first time from your restaurant, count that customer as a new customer (not if they’ve just ordered for the first time from Zomato). That should give you a true picture of what’s happening. At Xeno, we’ve built a new vs. repeat channel wise report to answer this question for you in seconds. Trust me when I say this, the answers can be surprising. We’ve had restaurants think they’re not getting value from Zomato when they’ve actually gotten an amazing response & vice versa. Data is king.

Do customers return after ordering from Foodpanda?

Ultimately, getting repeat orders is what runs your restaurant. Repeat orders make customers profitable. Imagine, you’re getting 20 new customers a day from 1 channel, but 10 from another channel. But the 2nd channel has 3 times the retention rate. Going for the 2nd channel will grow your business much faster, but just looking at the initial numbers of orders will guide you in the wrong direction. Xeno’s channel profitability report helps you understand which channel is working out best for you.

It will tell you what percentage of customers return after ordering from Foodpanda, or any other channel.

Do I get more orders if I run a discount on Zomato or do my existing customers shift?

I ran a discount on Zomato. Now what? Did it work or not? Most restaurant owners just look at the total no. of orders, but looking at who ordered will change the way you think about discounts. One of our restaurants was running a 10% off campaign on Zomato. Business was good. Then they stopped the 10% off discount, and sales via Zomato dropped by 15%. What’s the solution? Run a discount on Zomato again. No. Absolutely no. You need to look at the data.

The data gave us an interesting insight. Repeat orders increased without the discount, but new orders fell by 80%. Now the solution is clear, run an offer for new customers on Zomato. But that might not be the answer for you; that answer lies in your data.

Once a customer orders from Foodpanda, do they order from my website?

A lot of restaurants owner want to shift customers from an online ordering channel to their website because they want to save on commissions. Is that the right thing to do, that’s a whole different question. But let’s say you’re running campaigns to shift customers to your website. Is it happening? Xeno’s channel shifting report has the answer. See the customers that shift from 1 channel to the next after initially ordering from Foodpanda or another online ordering channel.

You can also see if customers who first called you or ordered on your website are now ordering from different channels.

I ran an ad on Zomato. Did it deliver results?

One of the biggest questions we get asked. Well, everyone wants to know if they’ll get a return on their investment. We get asked this question even before running the ad. Our answer. Yes. Run the ad, at-least give it a try. Most of the time they work. But whether you should continue or not, or change your ads location depends on the performance. More specifically, how many new customers you acquired via the campaign. With Xeno’s channelover time report, you can compare how many new customers you acquired during the ad versus during a previous or future time-period.

See a bump up in new customers, push more on Zomato ads. See a bump down, try a different ad, or stop the ads altogether. The decision becomes a simple one. Data leads to the correct decision. The correct decision leads to profitability. That’s why the biggest businesses are so gung ho about data. So the answer to maximizing profitability from Zomato & Foodpanda is simple. Just look at your data, find an insight, and act on it.[mc4wp_form]