How To Make A Food Delivery Website in 2022

Many people prefer to order food from home with a few taps, and many restaurants and start-ups respond by building their own food delivery websites.

Building a food delivery website takes knowledge of the market, business models and other components, including advertising. This guide covers the main ones.

Why Do You Need A Website For Food Delivery?

Our previous article about food delivery trends described how large the food delivery market is. Food ordering websites let people order food remotely and receive it at their door. Here is how to build one.

A food ordering and delivery website has these advantages:

Convenience

Accessibility and convenience are the main reasons people use food ordering websites. Users can order food with a few taps on a smartphone, tablet or laptop. They save time, you deliver on time, and customers come back.

Trends

This advantage matters most to business owners. If you plan to start a food delivery business, follow current food delivery trends (see the article mentioned above) and apply the ones that fit your business.

Online payments

Customers can pay online and avoid handing cash to a courier. Keep cash on delivery as an option too, so users can choose how to pay.

Online menu and images

Customers like to research a restaurant before they order. They want to know the cuisine and the menu. Good photos and a detailed menu with the ingredients of each dish help them decide to order.

Individual approach

Users can customise an order and add or remove ingredients. Your food delivery website can also suggest extras at checkout, for example a sauce or drink that goes well with the selected dish.

Virtual restaurant

Delivery-only (virtual) kitchens are another option: you cook and deliver, with no restaurant that people can visit. This lets you test a menu without renting a dining room, which makes it a useful model for a new business.

Go Wombat can build a food delivery website to your requirements: contact us.

Online Food Delivery Business Models

The business model sets the direction for your food delivery website. There are three main models.

The order-only model

You can create a food delivery website like Grubhub that acts as an intermediary between customers and restaurants. The platform connects customers with local restaurants and takes their orders; the restaurants deliver the food themselves. You earn a fixed commission per order. For restaurants, the platform is also an extra promotion channel, which is why they join.

The order and delivery model

This model suits restaurants that don’t want their own delivery fleet: your platform takes the orders and organises delivery. Uber Eats and Glovo, whose couriers pick up orders from restaurants and bring them to the customer’s door, are good examples. Your revenue again comes from commission.

The fully integrated model

The last model covers everything: ordering, cooking and delivery. It suits you if you have your own restaurant or virtual kitchen. It needs more investment, as you pay for staff and equipment. Domino’s Pizza is a pizza chain that uses a fully integrated model.

The Primary Features Of A Food Delivery Website

A food delivery website needs features for both customers and restaurants.

For a customer interface

Registration

Keep registration as simple as possible, for example with sign-up through Google, Facebook or other popular accounts.

User profile

Customers add a name, delivery address, phone number, email and, optionally, a photo. To pay by card, they also add their card details.

Geolocation

Geolocation helps couriers find customers quickly and shows customers where a restaurant is on the map. You could build your own map system, but in our opinion integrating Google Maps is easier and cheaper.

List

On an order-only or order-and-delivery platform, the website should list the restaurants you have agreements with. This also gives you another revenue stream: restaurants can pay to appear at the top of the list.

Search

Customers use filters to find nearby restaurants that match their criteria. Filters are optional, but they make it much easier to find exactly what people want.

Push notifications

Customers get a notification when their order status changes (accepted/rejected, in progress, delivered), so they always know where their order is. A push notification or text message does not interrupt them if they are busy.

Food categories

If your restaurant offers several cuisines or your platform works with many restaurants, let users browse dishes by category and type (fast food, Asian or European cuisine, desserts, alcoholic drinks, hot drinks).

Payment gateway

Online payment is a must-have for food delivery. Payments must be secure and protected against unauthorised access.

Order tracking

Order tracking lets users follow the delivery in real time. It requires a courier mobile app that sends the courier’s GPS location.

Reviews/ratings

Reviews and ratings of dishes build loyalty. Users can see which dishes are popular, whether people are satisfied with the service, and other useful details.

For a restaurant interface

Accepting/rejecting orders

Restaurant staff receive and manage orders. If an order cannot be cooked or delivered, the customer gets a notification.

History of orders

Staff can check the order history, including how many orders were accepted or rejected.

Real-time analytics

Businesses can track total sales and create analytical reports.

Financial statistics

Restaurants can see how much they earned on a given day, week, month or year, and filter the statistics by income or spending.

Administration panel

The administrator can manage website content, change payment methods, remove restaurants whose agreements have ended, and handle similar tasks.

Your website may also need a courier mobile app with a list of available orders, registration, real-time tracking and navigation, status updates and in-app messaging.

At Go Wombat, we use React Native to build native cross-platform apps that work on several mobile operating systems.

Build your food delivery app and website with Go Wombat: contact us.

Steps To Build Food Delivery Website

Defining A Sector

Start with market research: choose your food delivery sector, follow current trends, and analyse competitors and your target audience. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) shows the strong and weak points of your future business and helps you choose the right business model.

Choosing A Name

The name of your food delivery website should be catchy, memorable and original, and it should tell users what the website is about.

Website Development

Some business owners start with website builders or out-of-the-box solutions to save money, but these rarely give you a website that meets all your requirements. Whoever builds the site, plan for Quality Assurance: test it during development and before launch.

To stay competitive and offer features others don’t have, build a custom website with an experienced food delivery website developer. Go Wombat can build your website from scratch.

Start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test the idea. See our tips on reducing MVP development costs.

Also choose a domain for your website, and budget for extras such as a photographer for professional food photos.

Critical Components Of A Food Delivery Website

A stunning design

Choose one visual style and stick to it. At Go Wombat, our UI/UX designers can help you create an attractive, easy-to-use design for your food delivery website.

Intuitive navigation

Users should find their way around your website without effort: a clear, simple layout with elements that are easy to find.

Calls To Action (CTA)

Give each screen one clear action: ‘Order now’ on the menu, ‘Track order’ after checkout. Clear CTAs directly affect conversions.

Responsive design

Your website must be responsive, i.e. adapt to mobile screens. Many customers use their phones to find restaurants and order food, so a site that does not work well on mobile loses customers.

High performance

At Go Wombat, our Quality Assurance engineers can load-test the product during development so it stays stable at peak times. Pages should also load fast: Google recommends a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of 2.5 seconds or less.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO helps your website rank higher in search engines, which brings more traffic and customers. The website should use relevant keywords, be responsive and let you edit page titles and meta descriptions.

Contact details

Make contact details easy to find. A chatbot on the homepage can also answer customers’ questions quickly.

Subscription form

Retaining customers is a primary goal, so add a visible subscription form where they can sign up for news about new dishes and discounts.