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In today’s mobile-first world, having a functional branded app is an essential tool for any business that wants to instil trust in their brand and help their target audience enjoy their product or service.
Though branded apps aren’t exactly a given in the restaurant industry, more and more people are expecting apps to be a part of their dining experience and their wider interactions with restaurant brands, and if you don’t have a mobile app for your business in place, you could be losing out on huge amounts of exposure and revenue.
In this post, we’ll walk you through a complete guide to developing and growing a mobile app for your business, with actionable steps that will help you delight your customers and maximise your finished app’s equity.
The start of any successful app development process is similar to that of a successful business, and requires careful analysis of the state of the market, the current big players, and the app design conventions that are shared by your close competitors.
Once you’ve determined the kind of functions you’d like your app to fulfil and how it will be different from what’s available on the current market, you’ll have a clearer guiding philosophy which will help inform all your future decisions.
Apps in the restaurant industry can be pretty diverse, but there are still a few common functions to consider when you first start figuring out your app’s place in the market:
Online Ordering: In the wake of the pandemic, more and more restaurant types are expected to provide food delivery.
Though aggregators like Deliveroo and Uber Eats are immensely popular, providing favourable prices and special deals through your own ordering app can help you carve out an exclusive niche in the market.
At-Table Ordering: At-table apps also saw a big surge when social distancing was the norm, but in recent years, diners have also embraced them for their efficiency and convenience.
Aside from reducing the need for paper menus and offering a wider array of card payment machine options, at-table ordering can also be a great conduit to growing loyalty programs.
Loyalty Programs: People like variety when they eat out, and customer retention has always been a challenge in the restaurant business.
Loyalty program apps that make it easy for customers to keep track of accumulated points, and send push notifications about the rewards they’ve earned, are a great way to keep customers in your corner.
Once you’ve determined the functions of your app and how you’ll set it apart from the competition, you’ll need to organise the people and resources that are actually going to make the app come to life.
If you’ve been window-shopping for app development resources, then you’ll probably be aware there are two main routes you can take for developing an app:
Hiring Freelancers: Hiring freelance app developers can be a convenient cost-effective method of turning your app idea into a reality, especially through affordable aggregators like Fiverr.
Having said that, it’s not without its risks. Because they’re all one-person shows, freelancers are often ready to start right away, but will have limited bandwidth for work which could drag out the development timeframe.
Creating an In-House Team: Hiring a temporary dev team tends to be a lot pricier than the alternatives, but it allows you to stay in constant contact with your developers and hold nuanced discussions about features as they take shape.
Hiring an App Development Company: Often the most popular route to take, hiring an app development company (like Intelivita for example!) is another good option for developing your restaurant app. Though more costly than going to a freelance developer, app development companies will allow you to tap into the expertise from a full range of app-building professionals, ensuring greater capacity to get your app up and running in a timeframe that suits you.
Whichever way you decide to assemble your development team, the most important thing is to make sure you have a clear vision of your app’s audience, functionality, and scope before you contact outside parties. This will help your project move along efficiently, and avoid any frustrating miscommunications that will slow your progress.
Now that you have your broader vision, and the experts who can turn it into a reality in place, the next phase is to actually design your app.
Assuming that you’re already armed with some detailed competitor analysis and an understanding of the trends and best practices that characterise the app you’re planning to build, you should be ready to launch straight into your user flows and app wireframes.
User flows are visual diagrams that demonstrate how your users will interact with and move through your app, and can be adjusted and redrafted for different users with different intentions.
To start this process, we recommend finding some good flowchart software like Lucidchart, and brainstorming the various kinds of interactions you anticipate customers to have with your app.
Have one user flow for people who are ordering online, one for those who are ordering to a table, one for customers setting themselves up with your loyalty program, and any other user flows that you might need to accommodate for.
A simple table order user flow might look something like this:
Home > Menu > Add items > Review order > Payment details > Loyalty program page.
As you create more user flows, you’ll likely come across more use cases that you hadn’t thought of before.
Our advice is to run with it!
Don’t be afraid of planning outside of your preconceived idea of the app, as fleshing out new use cases and creating diagrams to visualise them is one of the most reliable ways to communicate with developers about the kinds of features you want to focus on, and articulate how your app will make life easier for your customers.
When your user flows are in place, it’s also a good idea to start sketching some wireframes to help understand exactly how your app navigation will work.
Wireframes are simple sketches representing the interface of an app, which can be created from scratch with the help of a graphic designer, or through purpose-built tools like Creately.
By laying out your established user flows in an actual interface, you’ll not only stimulate productive conversations about the UX, but also open your eyes to potential issues in your design.
For example where you may have crammed too many buttons and content onto a single page.
Catching these kinds of shortcomings as early as possible can uncover solutions to problems before they actually manifest, and avoid wasted time trying to get a clunky prototype to work.
At this stage, you’ll have all the preliminary materials in place to start developing your idea into a reality - implementing the core features, fine-tuning the UX, and adding aesthetic finishing touches.
Though most of the actual work will be done by developers, you’ll still have an important responsibility to the project, and will need to keep your finger on the pulse to ensure the project goes smoothly.
One important step to take early on is establishing regular calls to keep updated on the app’s progress, giving you an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the dev process, flesh out ideas, and ask questions.
Furthermore, if there’s any conflicts between the development team and your grand vision, these regular check-ins will give you the perfect opportunity to understand these and negotiate a route forward that suits both parties.
These can be weekly, bi-weekly, or even more often depending on how quickly things are moving along.
When you finally have a working prototype of the app, it’s time to test it thoroughly.
Do this by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and running through the most common use cases that you set out in your user flows, then branching out into more niche and unlikely situations that a customer might use your app for.
Effective app testing has a lot of variables and can cover a great many scenarios, so we strongly recommend getting everyone at your company possible to download and use the prototype.
With multiple mindsets and attitudes, you’ll have a better chance of picking up on issues that you hadn’t thought of, and saving yourself a lot of trouble further down the line when these use cases appear post-launch.
Once your app is ready to be released publicly, you’ll need to start thinking about telling the world about it.
Like most digital products, restaurant apps can benefit greatly from a multi-channel approach to marketing where platforms such as social media, email, content marketing, and more are used to disseminate the knowledge of your app as widely as possible. While having a digital marketing strategy that covers all the channels where your audience spends their time is certainly important, it’s also important to think outside of the internet leverage your customers’ real-world dining experience.
As a restaurant, you have unique access to owned promotional spaces that are perfect for a variety of affordable advertising techniques.
For example, you could adorn your restaurant with table talkers and posters with a QR code linking to your app, or include flyers with the same code in all of your delivery orders.
These can also be great platforms for first-timer exclusive promotions which will motivate customers to join your loyalty program.
As you strategise and roll out your marketing, remember that one of the most important elements of your marketing success is the app itself.
App uninstall rates are a big factor in ASO (app store optimisation), so even after launch, make sure you’re doing everything to ensure the app works as intended, and that you’re acting quickly on any issues that emerge.
This brings us to our final point…
Like any other app, your restaurant business app won’t be perfect on the day it launches, and in order for it to reach its potential, you’ll need to approach it as something that requires constant improvement.
As soon as your app starts getting downloads, you should be proactively seeking out feedback from your users, and thinking about how you can action this feedback for a positive user experience.
To get the most out of this phase of your app development, you’ll need to actively ask your customers to give you feedback.
There are many different ways to do this, but the most important factor is ensuring that the way you seek feedback is user-friendly and unintrusive.
One of the best ways to gather feedback without annoying your audience is the simple “are you enjoying [App Name]” pop-ups that we’re all so familiar with.
These allow the user to share their thoughts by simply tapping “yes” or “no”, without taking time away from whatever they were in the middle of doing.
Another non-intrusive way to gather feedback is to include a feedback button in the app interface.
Though these tend to attract more negative feedback than positive, it’s still user-friendly enough to get a good read on how your app is being received by its users.
From these simple channels, you can fish for more detailed and precise feedback with forms and surveys sent out through mailing lists and social media followers.
Just be aware that your followers have a capacity for marketing communications too.
If there are a lot of different elements that you’d like to get feedback on, make sure to spread these questions out across different groups of recipients in order to stop your contacts from getting fatigued.
Though the prospect of developing an app for your restaurant can certainly be daunting, the rewards in customer engagement and promotional opportunities are too good to miss out on.
As you prepare to tackle this challenging project, we hope our guide to restaurant mobile app development has helped you to create a roadmap that works for you, and ultimately, create an app that’s a roaring success!
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