Benefits of A/B Testing for Venue Owners
- A/B testing allows you to identify the most effective design elements and content for your digital menu, leading to a more engaging and user-friendly experience for your customers.
- By testing different versions of your menu, you can optimize your sales by promoting popular items, streamlining the ordering process, and encouraging upselling.
- A/B testing provides valuable insights backed by data, helping you make informed decisions about your menu offerings and pricing.
How to Conduct a Successful A/B Test with NeatMenu
- Before starting an A/B test for your restaurant's digital menu, clearly define your goals and the metrics you'll use to measure success, such as average order value or customer feedback.
- Create two or more menu variations with different designs, layouts, or item offerings that you would like to test.
- Select one menu variation to be visible to customers, while hiding the other(s). Run the test for a specific period, then switch the visibility settings and compare the results of both variations.
- Track customer engagement, feedback, and sales data related to each menu variation. Use this data to identify the most effective menu for your venue.
- Based on the results of your A/B test, implement the winning menu variation and continue to monitor customer engagement, making adjustments as needed to further optimize the menu experience.
Examples of Using A/B Testing for Menu Engineering for Max Profit
A/B testing is a powerful tool that can help restaurants optimize their menus and increase profits. By testing different versions of a menu, restaurants can gather data on what works and what doesn't, and make informed decisions about how to design and promote their menu items.
Crafting Unique Descriptions for Menu Items
One key aspect of menu engineering that can be incorporated into A/B testing is the use of unique descriptions for menu items. By crafting descriptive and engaging descriptions, restaurants can make their dishes more appealing to customers and increase sales.
For example, say you want to promote the sales of your alfredo chicken dish, as it is your low-cost but high-margin item. Instead of simply listing "chicken alfredo" or whatever the current description is on the menu, you could describe it as “creamy fettuccine noodles tossed with succulent grilled chicken in a rich parmesan sauce.” Use catchy and authentic-sounding words like signature, famous, and special. For instance, your Mac and Cheese can sell more if you would present it as “Our Signature Mac and Four Cheese Casserole”. This adds a sense of scarcity and exclusivity, it offers people not just a dinner, but an experience, thinking that they can get this dish only here.
The possibilities are endless and totally up to your creativity and imagination. Play around and test different options for your already existing dishes. And just by twitching a few words here and there, at no cost at all, you can make a big impact on sales.
Using Design Elements to Draw Attention to High-Profit Items
Through A/B testing, restaurants can determine which design elements work best for their specific menu and customer base, and optimize their menus for maximum profitability.
When it comes to digital menus, Michele Benesch, a leading menu engineering expert, has a trick - use multiple font sizes on the same page, For example, you can increase the font size of high-priority items by 2 points to highlight them and make them stand out. This is such a subtle change, that might not even be noticeable at first glance, but it will definitely draw customers' attention to the item you wish to sell more of.
You can try and use different design elements like a star symbol* next to it or writing a (best seller) below the item. Maybe use bolding and different heading colors to draw attention to high-profit items on the menus. By making these items stand out visually, customers are more likely to notice them and choose them over other options.
Presenting Prices as Standalone Numbers
A study by the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University found that presenting prices as standalone numbers, without the use of currency symbols ($) is actually a good tactic for making people spend more money than they normally would. We've talked more in-depth on this subject in one of our previous blog posts, which you should definitely check out, as it contains other valuable insides when it comes to menu engineering and optimization.
The research has shown that the presence of a currency symbol can trigger a defense mechanism in the brain that associates the symbol with cost rather than gain. As a result, customers may be more likely to focus on cheaper dishes. Presenting prices as standalone numbers, without the symbol, can be more effective in encouraging diners to base their purchasing decisions on other factors, such as the dish's description and quality. this approach can encourage customers to spend more and choose higher-margin items.
This tactic is applicable to both traditional and digital menus. You can run this experiment at your venue and A/B test it, to see if it works. And if it does, how much of an impact has over the average amount of money spent per person? Now thanks to the digital menus it is easier than ever to run an A/B test. With the click of a button, your menu is updated, up and running. You can change prices, descriptions, font sizes and colors, change the image of any dish, add new items and categories etc.
Strategic pricing
This might be the most crucial tip that we have to offer - list your highest-priced dish first. So that everything else on the list below will seem like a good deal. Strategically place your highest-margin dish right below the most expensive one, as this will be your most-ordered dish. There is good reasoning for this advice.
Ask yourself - how do you typically decide which dish to order? Unless you have a specific preference or dietary restriction, you may start by identifying the most and least expensive options and settling for something in the middle. Alternatively, you might ask your server for recommendations.
In a classic experiment conducted by renowned behavioral economist Richard Thaler, participants were offered a premium beer for $2.50 or a bargain beer for $1.80. Around 80% of participants chose the more expensive beer. However, when a third lower-priced beer was introduced at $1.60, most people opted for the $1.80 beer instead. This suggests that we tend to evaluate options based on surrounding information and that things only appear cheap or expensive when compared to an alternative.
Restaurants often use this principle to their advantage by strategically placing high-priced items at the top of the menu. By doing so, the other dishes on the menu appear more reasonably priced in comparison. For example, a $20 pasta dish may not seem as expensive when it's listed next to a $60 Fiorentina steak.
So, why wait? Simply change the order of the items in each category on your menu, starting from the most expensive to the cheapest one, and test if this strategy will work in your restaurant.
With that being said, we can conclude that understanding how customers make decisions can help restaurants optimize their menus and increase sales. By using tactics such as strategic pricing, unique dish descriptions, and attention-grabbing design elements, restaurants can sway customers towards high-profit margin items. Through A/B testing, restaurants can determine what works best for their specific menu and customer base, and create a menu that's not only appealing but also profitable.
A/B testing with NeatMenu is a powerful way to improve your venue's digital menu and enhance the overall customer experience. By following the steps outlined above, you can make data-driven decisions to increase customer satisfaction and boost revenue. For a comprehensive guide on conducting A/B tests with NeatMenu, please refer to our detailed A/B testing documentation.
