Online Pizza Ordering the Way it Should Be
Dominos.com now the stick to which all future online pizza ordering systems (and other ordering systems) will be measured. The wife and I received a coupon for Domino's Pizza today in the mail, and while I normally don't go for eating out on a Monday night, she has been busy as of late and I had just gotten home after sitting for quite some time in traffic. I was just going to call in the order but then I decided to order online.
First of all, I immediately realized when I approached their page that they have the "You got 30 minutes" marketing campaign right now. Also, I must say that they have the nicest online pizza ordering site in the industry (though I can only compare it to Papa John's and Pizza Hut). There Web 2.0 look and feel as well as Flash-y elements created great appeal and very nice appearance. But that wasn't the half of it...
Along with their launch of this new campaign came the launch of the "Pizza Tracker". This thing is awesome! A real-time application written in Flash provide a slick interface and virtual viewport of your pizza each step of the way. A large progress bar shows you the status from Order Placed, Prep, Bake, Box, to Delivery all as it happens. In some of the steps, it even tells you who completed that part of the process. It includes a glowing red filler for each of the progress as the bar fills up. This application is a great example of what non-technical companies can do to utilize today's instant gratification technologies like Flash and Data Services.
Here are some screenshots of the process as it was happening:
