Delivery app orders suddenly dropped? Nine things to check, in order

Last week was normal. This week the tablet is quiet. Nothing changed in the kitchen, so what happened?

When orders fall slowly over months, the cause is usually the storefront itself. We cover that in How to get more orders on Talabat in Dubai. A sudden drop is different. Something specific changed, on your side or on the app's side, and most of the time you can find it in one hour.

Here are nine checks, from the fastest to the slowest. Do them in order, on every app you are on.

How do you measure a drop in orders?

Open the partner portal of each app and compare the last seven days with the seven days before.

Look at three numbers, not one:

• how many customers saw your restaurant,
• how many opened your menu,
• how many ordered.

If all three fell together, fewer people see you: start with checks 1 to 5. If views are stable and orders fell, people see you and leave: go to checks 6 to 9.

One app down and the others stable? The cause is on that app. All apps down the same week? Look at your kitchen, your area or the calendar.

Checks 1 to 5: why are fewer people seeing you?

1. Were you really open? Look at your opening hours in each app, then at the hours the tablet was actually on. A tablet switched to "busy" on Friday night and never switched back is the most common cause we find. So is a holiday schedule that nobody removed.

2. Did an offer or a paid placement end? Offers and ads have an end date. When one stops, the customers it brought stop too. List what was running two weeks ago and what is running today.

3. Did your rating move? A few bad reviews in a short time can pull a rating down. Read the last twenty reviews. Look for one complaint that comes back: late, cold, missing item, wrong order.

4. Did your delivery area or delivery time change? Apps reduce the area you deliver to when riders are short or when your preparation gets slow. A smaller area means fewer customers can see you at all. Compare the promised delivery time on your page today with what you remember.

5. Did something change around you? A new restaurant with the same cuisine and a strong opening offer, school holidays, Ramadan hours, a week of rain or of very good weather. You cannot fix these, but you can stop looking for a problem that is not yours.

Checks 6 to 9: why do people see you and leave?

6. Are your best sellers available? Count the dishes marked unavailable right now. If your first or second best seller is switched off, your regular customers open the menu, do not find their dish, and close it.

7. Did the menu change without you? If your apps are connected to a POS, a sync can erase a photo, rename a category or bring back an old price. Open your own storefront on a phone, as a customer, and scroll. More on this in Using Foodics, Deliverect or GrubTech? Edit your menu in the right place.

8. Did prices or fees change? A price increase on the dishes customers know by heart is visible at once. So is a higher minimum order. If you changed prices this month, compare the orders of those dishes before and after.

9. What does the page look like next to its neighbours? Search your cuisine in your area on the app. Look at the three restaurants above you: cover image, photos, offer, rating, delivery time. Your customer made that comparison in five seconds.

What should you avoid when orders drop?

Do not launch a 50% discount on day one. It hides the cause, and it is expensive: on the invoices we have checked, commission was taken on the menu price, before the discount. The maths is in The real cost of a 50% discount on delivery apps.

Do not change ten things at once either. Fix what the checks show, wait one week, and compare the same three numbers.

Questions owners ask us

Should I call my account manager? Yes, after the checks. Go with facts: "views fell from Monday, my area looks smaller, here are the two screenshots." You get a real answer faster than with "my orders are down".

How long before orders come back? It depends on the cause. A tablet that was closed is fixed the same day. A rating takes longer, because it moves one review at a time.

The app changed something and did not tell me. Is that normal? Apps adjust delivery areas and delivery times on their own, depending on riders and on your preparation. Ask your account manager what changed and what would bring it back.

Where we come in

We rebuild and manage delivery app storefronts in the UAE: Talabat, Deliveroo, Keeta, Noon Food and Careem. Every two weeks we look at these numbers with our clients, so a drop is seen in days, not at the end of the month.

Not sure which check explains your drop? Send us the link to your storefront. Your score out of 100 lands in your inbox in minutes, then we go through it with you, with no upfront investment.