Web sales growing 'steadily' at Domino's Pizza

Online channel performs well, but growth rate is not as fast

Web sales at Domino's are still growing

Growth in the e-commerce arm of Domino’s Pizza started to slow after years of increasing sales through the channel, according to the company’s results out today.

Online sales increased by 40.4 per cent for the fiscal year ending 27 December 2009 to £78.5m, by comparison with 73.7 per cent growth and £55.9m posted for 2008.

But the IT chief at the fast food firm, Jane Kimberlin, maintains that the 40 per cent growth rate is still ‘vast’ and that the expansion of Domino’s online operation has not reached a plateau.

“[The web operation] has broken records continuously during 2009 and it continues to be a very important part of how we sell our products to customers,” Kimberlin told Computing.

Over the last year, Domino’s processed around £600,000 in pizza sales online during a single night and launched mobile-based order tracking applications. The firm already offers 17 different ordering channels, which include SMS and a Second Life store.

The company is also placing emphasis in the use of social networking and is present across the most popular platforms including Facebook and Twitter.

A year ago, Kimberlin told Computing the firm would give its website a ‘good lick of paint’. The project is now nearing its final stages of completion and tests are currently being carried out ahead of the relaunch.

“We expect the web to steadily grow as it becomes the de facto way of ordering [pizza] and as we continue to invest in the channel,” she said.

According to Kimberlin, the web represents about 30 per cent of total delivered sales at Domino’s and it is expected to surpass telephone orders in three to five years’ time, though the firm says it will not focus solely on this area.

“We don’t expect it to be like Ryanair and enforce an online-only model, even if there is a natural migration [to the web] taking place,” said Kimberlin.

“It all depends on how much you want to force your customers. We want to offer different ways of ordering to our customer base, but will not exclude other customer communication channels and will continue to offer them a range of choices,” she said.

“But as new devices come online we will [use them], depending on what matches consumer demand.”