Why and how to create a food delivery website

Online food ordering food is part of today’s culture. People order food delivery and enjoy their meals with minimal effort and maximum comfort. In this post, our web agency shares why it’s worth offering online food delivery and how to create a food delivery website that raises customer satisfaction sky-high together with your sales.

The popularity of online food delivery

According to Statista, the online food delivery segment amounts to US$136,431 million in 2020 — double the total of US$76,195 in 2017. Moreover, it is expected to reach US$182,327 million in 2024.

The number of people who use the online food delivery market also shows a steady growth:

• In restaurant-to-consumer delivery: up from 497.3 million in 2017 to 693.7 million in 2020 and is expected to grow to 874.9 million in 2024.
• In the platform-to-consumer delivery: up from 364.8 million in 2017 to 625.9 million in 2020 and is expected to grow to 858 million in 2024.

The global pandemic has given an extra boost to food delivery services. Restaurants that offered food delivery could survive through the quarantine and decide to continue with this option in the future. Customers have appreciated the convenience of online food delivery from restaurants, food stores, and courier services that will keep the trend after the restrictions are over.

According to the March 2020 survey of consumers in the US, 41.7% of people said they were likely to order online food delivery from restaurants:

Types of food delivery businesses

You can build a food delivery website around one of these business models:

1) Local vs global

In the local model, you deliver food locally from your own restaurant, shop, or food courier service. This is one of the best ideas for building a local business website (click to discover what dividends a local business can get from a website nowadays).

In the global model, you offer worldwide food delivery — a business like UberEats or Delivery.com.

2) Cooperation models

• Order-only. Your website accepts orders from food from third-party providers and the delivery is up to them.
• Order and delivery. You take care of both ordering and delivery.
• Full integration. You make food, accept orders, and do the delivery.

Some great examples of food delivering websites

If you want to create a food delivery website, we offer you a chance to be inspired by examples of online food ordering websites from industry leaders.

Food Panda. From its website, customers can order their favorite dishes from restaurants and grocery stores near them. The site is available for 12 counties that users can choose from.

UberEats. This is another global food delivery service whose website offers customers to just enter their address into the search bar and find food. It also offers featured foods and other delivery options.

Delivery.com. The website immediately invites users to see who delivers food, drinks, groceries, home essentials, etc., in their neighbourhood. It also allows them to select from a really impressive list of cuisines, cities, and more.

DoorDash. On their website, users can order delivery and takeout from their preferred local restaurants. Entering the delivery address, or browsing top cities and top cuisines near them is very easy.

How to build a food delivery website: key features

If you want to build a food website like DoorDash, Delivery.com, FoodPanda, UberEats, and many other great examples, read on. Here is what food delivery websites should be equipped with in order to attract customers and boost your orders.

• Appealing visuals. High-quality and enticing food images should occupy an important part in the whole website design. If you want to build a restaurant website with food delivery, you should also include images of the food preparation.
• Menu or catalog. All items for ordering need detailed descriptions and, of course, attractive images. If the number of items is big, your food delivery website will benefit a lot from the filtering and sorting feature by food categories, cuisines, ingredients, etc.
• Multi-country and multi-language. If you are aiming for the global market, you will benefit from presenting your services in multiple languages. Many global players immediately invite a user to select their country or city and then proceed with choosing their food.
• Clear calls-to-action. The order button needs to be in a prominent place, have a clear label that tells customers what to do, and have a sufficient color contrast against the background. Buttons for mobile design must be large enough to click with fingers.
• Convenient shopping cart. Even small food delivery websites are equipped with a shopping cart where users can store their orders and keep browsing. A shopping cart needs the options to view, edit, and delete the items. It is much more engaging with features like real-time price updates, slide-out or flyout, etc.
• User-friendly order forms. Make sure the steps in the order form are minimum, and you do not require too much information. All form fields have clear labels and error messages should appear near each field, which is an important accessibility requirement.
• Safe online payment. Online payment, payment upon delivery, or another method — give your customers a choice. It’s important to integrate your food delivery website with reliable payment providers.
• Voice search optimization. Voice searches constitute half of all searches, and specific niches like local food delivery are especially often queried by voice (including with the words “near me”). So be sure to optimize your website for voice search which includes features snippets, local search optimization, switching to HTTPS, and more.
• “Leave-at-my-door” delivery. This type of delivery has always been in demand, especially with customers who cannot be physically present at a particular moment at home. The pandemic has increased the popularity of this option. Consider adding it to your order form.
• Covid awareness. Many customers care about the safety of food preparation and delivery after the Corona crisis. Make it clear on the site’s main page that you care about it as well — for example, by including a photo of staff in masks or promising that the couriers will wear them.
• Mobile optimization. Make sure it is easy for users with smartphones and tablets to view your offers and place an offer. Responsive web design is so far the best mobile optimization technique.
• Web accessibility. Be open to all customers who may need online food delivery, including those who rely on assistive technology. According to the best accessibility practices, add keyboard navigation to your site, provide ALT tags for images, provide a clear semantic markup, take care of the right error validation, etc.

Choosing a website platform

Nowadays, using content management systems (CMSs) are the optimal solution for an enterprise website.

• CMSs like Drupal and WordPress offer a lot of flexibility in features, customization options, security, scalability, and reliability as compared to simple DIY website constructors.
• At the same time, using CMSs as a basis for a website with all the needed customizations will be much cheaper than custom development from scratch using a programming language.

For example, we shared posts about building a food website with Drupal and using WordPress restaurant plugins, which you can check out. Our agency that deals with Drupal and WordPress can help you pick the platform for your food delivery website.

Build a food delivery website with web development professionals

The above information has been a glimpse at how to make a food ordering website that drives good traffic and sales. Ready to create a food website like Delivery.com, Doordash, FoodPanda, UberEats, and more?

It’s not just the food delivery that should be fast and convenient — our web development team also delivers web projects quickly and professionally at nice prices. Contact us for a free quote!