Don’t know why I haven’t blogged about this earlier. Everytime I order pizza from Papa John’s I never call in – instead I head over to PapaJohns.com. Even though their online ordering has been around for a while, it never fails to impress me each time an order is made (and we order often). Why order online when I can pick up a phone. Don’t know about you but I hate calling the pizza place especially when I don’t have a menu at hand or something to refer to. Sometimes we need a little hand with topping suggestions and the kid taking your order will rattle off the toppings faster than a machine gun. By the time they’re done, you’re still holding the phone trying to figure out what the 2nd topping he mentioned was.

Then there are times you ask if they have any special combos – whoa! Try figuring out what came with which. Wait a minute, was that one large two topping and one medium one topping or one medium two topping and one large one topping? I’m a visual person – so are most people so having online ordering is the best thing Papa John’s did for me as a customer and you know what? I quit calling everyone else. Makes me wonder why other pizza companies don’t have online ordering.

Seriously, the technology is not rocket science. I don’t know exactly how Papa John’s does it but it can’t be difficult. And I think a system like that is also very accessible to small businesses. For example, all shopping carts can send you an email alert upon order. On the other end, you can also easily send email to fax. All you need is a programmer to connect your shopping cart to the email to fax system. Also, you can easily get email alerts on a BetaBrite sign. So each time you get an order – the LED sign will tell you so.

You want less high tech? How about the simple “You’ve got mail” audio alert? One could very easily route orders to a dedicated email account, and turn the volume up :-). As a parting note – you know you can use this for any business.