When most people want to order a pizza, they pick up the phone and call their local pizza place. The other day, I went to the Dominos web site to see if they had an online coupon. For some reason I decided to try their online ordering. I was pleasantly surprised and very impressed.

The Shopping Cart

The first part of the process is the shopping cart. It’s a pretty standard shopping experience, but seems very well structured. But the most impressive part is that it allows for complete customization. Want different toppings on the right and left? No problem. They even show you a visual preview of your pizza.

You can ask for a specific time for the order to be delivered. Or save an order to use as a template later.

When you order, you can completely customize your pizza. There are even a few options I never would have thought to ask for…

The Pizza Tracker

Once you’ve placed your order, you are taken to a confirmation screen. This “Pizza Tracker” tells you where your pizza is, who’s making it, the name of your driver… You can take a survey and add comments. (Apparently, you can even share your order on Facebook… Which seems kind of odd… I didn’t do it…)

It even works if you call your order in. You just go to the Dominos site, click on Pizza Tracker and enter your phone number.

The only minor downside to the confirmation page is that it’s built in Flash so it’s useless on my iPhone. (I’m reasonably confident that someone will eventually build an iPhone “Pizza Tracker” application.)

The Confirmation Screen detail’s your pizza’s progress. Here, the status states that “Craig began custom-making your order at 6:15 PM.”

An Overall Impression

From looking at their old press releases, it looks like Dominos rolled out this system at the beginning of 2008. It appears they’ve upgraded it significantly since the initial rollout and I’m surprised they haven’t promoted it more. They have had a fair amount of PR difficulties of late and I’m sure they’ve had other issues to address.

However, I’m impressed that they’ve built such a complete system that allows for extensive customization. Literally anything done on the phone can be done online. And the confirmation page reinforces the messaging of the “You’ve got 30 minutes” marketing campaign. It’s impressive to see web sites and tools so completely tied into the marketing.